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The winter of 1865 which was one of great drought, precipitated matters and the new water-works which only a few years previously had been generally hailed as a boon were now as universally condemned for their smallness and insufficiency, great pressure being at the same time brought to bear upon the temporary administration of Mr. MERCER to provide a supply more adequate to the public necessities.
No steps however appear to have been taken during the Government of Mr. MERCER who in the natural course of things would leave so large a question to his successor Sir RICHARD MACDONNELL, and the latter did not arrive in the Colony until the following year.
Sir RICHARD MACDONNELL was not long before he took up the question of the water-supply. There are several minutes from his able pen on the necessity of an ample and complete provision of water for the people. These minutes would seem to have given rise to considerable discussion between the Governor and his professional advisers who represented to him the difficulty of any provision so large as that which he demanded, and finally the Governor was fain to content himself with a scheme for a small reservoir of about 74 million gallons in the Pokfoolum Valley to be finished in four years at a cost of $230,000. When this estimate of the cost became known, a temporary reaction appears to have set in among those who were unaware of the cost of water-works nor of the sums paid by European cities as a rule for their supplies. Indeed many of the Colonists thought that this time the Government was going too far in the opposite direction, and that the Pokfoolum reservoir scheme was not only unnecessarily large and ambitious but far too costly for so small a Colony. Eventually however the scheme was adopted, and within the four years the larger reservoir took the place of the small pond and though inadequate as a storage source, proved of no small relief in the then great straits to which the Colony had been reduced.
But again, for the second time, during the construction of new water-works in Hongkong, the population on whose estimated numbers the calculation for the new supply had been based had largely increased. New requirements had grown
up.
Water was wanted for industrial as well as for domestic uses. The culture of trees and plants entailing irrigation was spreading and asserting its demand. For the purposes of fire extinction this demand was no less loud, and above all the flushing and lequefaction of house-sewage, and other sanitary exigencies required a more generous provision than it now appeared could be procured from the new reservoir, so that the first doubts and disillusions as to the sufficiency of the volume impounded at Pokfoolum seem to date back from the very first year of the existence of the reservoir, and from that time to the present the complaints of the insufficiency of water have increased and become more aggravated every year with the increase of the population.
In 1872 Sir ARTHUR KENNEDY was appointed Governor and upon landing in the Colony found among other important matters awaiting settlement by him, that of the water-supply. This same unfortunate question had in a similar manner, six and twelve years previously, confronted his two immediate predecessors upon their assumption of the Government of Hongkong, and it appeared to be one fated never to be set at rest. The new Governor however profiting by the lessons of the past, and realizing the certainty that the necessities of the young and growing town of Victoria would attain enormously increased proportions in the course of time, declared himself against any partial expedients however alluring on the score of economy of cost, or against any schemes that would not bear subsequent expansion.
Accordingly upon my joining the Hongkong Civil Service in 1873, I was instructed to submit for the consideration of the Governor in Council, such recom- mendations as would secure not only an adequate provision for the present, but one capable of extension to meet prospective wants. These instructions involved a large question exacting careful study, so that it was not until the close of the year that I was able to submit any definite report on the result of my investigations.
Before touching however on the recommendations which ensued, it may be as well that I should explain on the one hand what was the actual allowance per head of population afforded by the Pokfoolum reservoir, and on the other hand what were the real water requirements of the people of Hongkong guaged on the most moderate basis. I will take the last point first.
The quantity of water used by civilized communities for domestic, sanitary, industrial, and other purposes has been the subject of so much observation in Europe that experience now enables very approximate estimations to be made of