THE TOWN WATER-SUPPLY.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 9, 27 May 1893, Page 7

THE TOWN WATER-SUPPLY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — I have often felt tempted to offer my opinion as t-o what is the cause of the bad water supplied to the people of Invercargill, but in the face of so much scientific opinion flying about I felt loth to do so ; but as there are no professional guineas or 6s 8d fees attaching to my opinion there should be no objection to receive it and let it lie aa the table. Shortly stated, then, I believe the matter found in the water is in it before it gets into the well. Mr It. W. Jones, the engineer who sank the well, gave this as his opinion some time ago—and he gave bis reason for his opinion, viz., that he had found the same sort of matter in water in various parts of Southland, or outside of it. This ochre —for that is the name of the stuff—has been found in many places in the subsoil of Southland where draining has been done, and has been a great trouble where tiles have been used. The late Mr J. H. Smith drained the laud on the east side of the North Read between theWaihopai river and the Waikiwi bush, and the six-inch pipes forming the outlet got completely blocked with this ochre, and had to be lifted, to allow the water to clear itself. The stuff can be seen floating on the water when the ditches are being cut. The theory that the bad water was due to corrosion of the mains, the tank, and the well cylinders, and boring of the mains for service pipes, seemed to me to be totally inadequate to account for the state of the water as described, and indeed as I have seen it; and I have often wondered that no one has brought his experience of water-supply in the Old Country to refute this theory. I will now give my own. I had several years’ experience in using water from iron pipes at Home, and these pipes were not like the Invercargill pipes black by being dipped in tar when hot. They had not been dipped, but were just as they were first cast, and the water had to come through thete pipes for ten miles to where I got my supply, which was at an out side, where the service ended, and in a low part where sediment would settle if there had been any, and some of those pipes were two feet in diameter. The water came out at the foot of a large hill and was forced on to the top of the hill into a reservoir by a powerful engine, and it ran from that reservoir seven or eight miles through these large pipes by gravitation to another reservoir on the top of a hill that overlooked the town that it supplied, and I never either saw or heard of anything being wrong with that water —in fact there was nothing wrong with it. So with such an experience with metal pipes, and with the knowledge that ochre is so plentiful in Southland subsoil, it seems most reasonable to conclude that the matter in the water at Invercargill is ochre, and only for that the corrosive matter would never be perceived in the water. Reservoirs will have to be made where the water can he purified before it is pumped into the tank. I saw plenty of ochre-water in the Old Country.—Yours, etc., T. Buxtoh.