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PUBLIC WORKS AND UTILITIES
freight free, Government being responsible for refunding the pur- chase price and for taking delivery. Finally, units of the Royal Navy and of the United States Navy generously added their quota, at a heavy expenditure, by using their distillation equipment. This assistance realized the useful total for the year of 14 million gallons, which was the more welcome for the spirit in which it was offered.
Sea-borne deliveries apart, vigorous attempts were made to in- crease the yield from the few natural sources which remained available. The most rewarding results were achieved from the River Indus which, although dry throughout the winter months, yields considerable quantities of water during and immediately after rain. To make use of this flow, various installations were stripped of their stand-by pumps, which were used to provide a combined pumping capacity of 24 million gallons a day. The yield was pumped directly into the 48 inch main which was laid in 1959 to carry water from China to Tai Lam Chung. The rate of extraction was dependent on the weather, but nevertheless a total of 1645.4 million gallons was obtained for the year.
Another expedient was the sinking of three wells in the Muk Wu area. These contributed the useful total of 59 million gallons during the same period. Unfortunately, the geophysical structure of the Colony militated against any widespread well-sinking pro- gramme as a possible means of alleviating the emergency. At the end of the year, however, Government was arranging to construct a number of well depots in the urban areas, from which the smaller industrialists might be able to collect non-potable water for in- dustrial use.
The beneficial effect of these local developments was to a large extent negatived by the reduction which the Chinese authorities found it necessary to make in the 1963-4 deliveries from their reservoir at Shum Chun, in the adjacent Province of Kwangtung. By an agreement signed in 1960, the competent authorities in the Po On county had contracted to supply Hong Kong with 5,000 million gallons of water a year. But this agreement operates only in years when the rainfall is not less than 1,600 mm (63 inches) and was therefore inoperative in the 1963 drought. The level of water in the Shum Chun reservoir remained exceptionally low, and