P.W.R. Hongkong.
Q 39
The rainfall for the year amounted to 81.48 inches (Observatory record) of which 30.07 inches fell in July. Though the rainfall for the whole year was only 1.68 inches under the average, for the last five months of the year, it was 10 inches under the average and, consequently, the dry season, which is regarded as commencing in October and extending until the end of April, opened under very unfavourable conditions. Fortunately, the Taitam Tuk Reservoir was sufficiently advanced by the commencement of the wet season to admit of its being fully utilized for storage purposes. The maximum quantity of water impounded by it during the wet season amounted to 972 million gallons or 330 million gallons more than the contents of all the other reservoirs combined.
The maximum quantity of water impounded in the whole of the reservoirs during the year amounted to 1,613.32 million gallons on the 29th August and the total quantity of water remaining in the reservoirs at the end of the year amounted to 1,173.10 million gallons.
One of the new pumping engines, though still in contractors' hands, was utilized, as far as possible, for maintaining the supply to the City and Hill District: the other engine was unfit for service owing to the steam-jacket of one of the cylinders being badly cracked. It was, however, only possible to obtain intermittent running and it was therefore necessary to run the two Tangye engines which were erected in 1908. The latter were in operation from the 1st January until the 19th June and from the 14th October until the end of the year, a total of 249 days.
The total quantity of water pumped during the year amounted to 705.45 million gallons as compared with 324.77 millions in 1916.
The following is a comparative statement of the cost of pumping during 1916 and 1917:-
Taitam Tuk Pumping Station 1916 1917 $ Coal, Wages, 19,265.77 47,058.32* Miscellaneous, including repairs and stores other than coal, 4,176.73 1,266.03 Total, 3,917.40 24,708.53 55,904.43*This is the value of the coal consumed during the year. Coal to the value of $3,852 was carried forward from 1916 to 1917 and coal to the value of $3,622.50 was carried forward from 1917 to 1918. The price of coal, in 1917, was $15.50 per ton during the first 7 months of the year and $20.30 per ton during the remaining 5 months. In 1916, it was $11.25 per ton for the first 3 months of the year and, for the remaining 9 months, it varied from $18.00 to $18.25 per ton.