Harbor Matters.

Gisborne Times, Volume VIII, Issue 505, 19 August 1902, Page 3

Harbor Matters.

(To the Editor of the Times )

Sib, —The Harbor 'Board makes more soap bubbles. No. 1, thobridgo will carry away. No. 2, earth pressure. No. 3, the piles aro too short. No. 1. If the first span of tho bridge be wholly closed, it would only cause the water to rise H inches higher at tho bridge during tho greatest floods. Will any engineer say that tbo Haiti bridge was within H inches of being carried away during previous floods. If so, the margin of safety is infinitesimally small, and the safety of the bridgo should bo seen to at once.

No. 2, earth pressure, about 2ft 6in, If the new wharf won’t bear this ext»a pressure, its margin of safety is out of all proportion to that allowed by practical men in all such works, and the plan of the wharf should be altered accordingly. No. 3. If the piles are too short for the proposed alteration, they are also too short for the original plan. In each case they should be an equal depth below tbo line of dredging. Let us now consider the loss in keeping to tbo original plan. There is the loss of wharf room; there is also the heavy grade to the road ; the first and continual cost of dredging the eddy in which the wharf is now to bo built. This

dredging will cost annually more than the first cost of the wharf, but then the John Townlcy might be put out of commission, with tbo result that a slump in patent slip shares would follow.—l am, etc., A. Y. Ross.