WATERWORKS.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1098, 5 January 1878, Page 3

WATERWORKS.

To the Editor of the Globe. Sik,- —With your permission I will show flic public the mistakes into which you fall in the leader ot Thursday. 1. You assume that only amateurs will compete. This is u gross error, because I know of some civil engineers who are preparing plans for the prize. 2. You assume that a contour map is all I hat is necessary to enable Mr Clark to form his judgment; whereas, there are three other principal factors required that time only can furnish, 3. You assume that Mr Clark can give a plan in a short time; whereas the probabilities are just the other way, because of the flatness of the district. The article is evidently drawn at the inspiration of the speech of the honorable and learned tailor, who evidently thinks that an engineer can give a plan just as readily as he can a coat. It is only to take the tape, to measure a gentleman, and say, “ when will you call and try it on ?” But an engineer of world-wide reputation will not risk that reputation by any such tailor-like proceedings. It is every way desirable that all the civil engineers of New Zealand should go over the ground first, and then eight or ten weeks of careful deliberation may or may not enable Mr Clark to judge. A scheme for waterworks is ten to one more difficult than drainage for so Hat a place as this, where surface channels and tidal outfall are all that is necessary to give health and comfort, and where sewers, as proposed by Mr Oarruthers, are dangerous to health because of the |(latnesß, and impossibility of construction within reasonable cost, because of the boiling quicksands. We ought to be the last people to complain of amateurs, because at Hokitika James Park gave the best scheme for fixing that dangerous bar. One, if not three, of the principal Canterbury engineers are only amateurs—Messrs White, Wright, Ac.—and when the Drainage Board, with three engineers at their back, viz., Messrs Carruthers, Bell, and Webster, drew and adopted the underground system, with high level outfall, only to see their adopted plan rejected by themselves for my tidal outfall. But then lam not an amateur, because my name stands in my University calendar, two years in succesion, first prize in “ Calculthat is, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, mensuration, survey with field work and plotting, plane and spherical trigonometry, draughtsmanship, and building construction. I have no doubt our friend the honorable and learned tailor thinks that far inferior to the goose, as a training for draining 'v Yours, ivc., J. W. TREADWELL.