MAINE STATE LEGISLATURE The following document is provided by the LAW AND LEGISLATIVE DIGITAL LIBRARY at the Maine State Law and Legislative Reference Library http://legislature.maine.gov/lawlib Reproduced from scanned originals with text recognition applied (searchable text may contain some errors and/or omissions) PUBLIC DOCUJ\iENTS OF MAINE: BEING THE It ANNUAL REPORTS OF VARIOUS PUBLIC OFFICERS AND INSTITUTIONS FOR THE YEAR • 1867-8. -... - AUGUSTA: OWEN & NASH, PRINTERS TO THE STATE, 1868. ---- ----~----------------- --------- ----------~-- ~~=~ PROVISION AL REPORT UPON THE WATER-POWER OF MAINE, BY WALTER WELLS, SECRETARY OF THE HYDROGRAPHIC SURVEY. -... - AUGUSTA: STEVENS & SAYWARD, PRINTERS TO THE STATE. _1868. DIVISION I. PRELIMINARY STATEMENT. REPORT. HYDROGRAPHIC OFFICE, } Portland, Me., Dec. 31, 18H7. To the Honorable Commissioners in charge of the Hydrographic Survey ofMaine­ JoHN A. PooR, A. D. LocKwooo, HANNIBAL HAMLYN: Gentlemen :-The material represented in the Compendfium of Statistics hereinafter following, has been collected by means of a series of circulars and by letters addressed to the municipal offi­ cers of cities, towns and plantations, to the proprietors of water­ power and the agents of water-power companies. Returns have been secured from 371 municipalities out of 425 to which commu­ nications were addressed. Nine townships also have volunteered information respecting their water-power, a fact worthy of notice since no circulars were issued to unincorporated places. The number of water-powers embodied is 1,955. A,s to the amount of working energy which these possess, it is of course impossible at this stage of our undertaking to form any other than a very rude estimate. It can hardly be questioned, however, that in the present undeveloped state of their reservoirs, natural and artificial, they will sum 300,000 net horse-powers. A part of the data upon which this conclusion is based may be stated. The Penob­ scot between .Treat's falls at Bangor and the falls at Oldtown, both inclusive, is estimated on the basis of .a former survey to :furnish 40,000 horse-powers, gross measurement; the "Piscataq~is Rips" at Howland and the privileges at Winn combined, will doubtless furnish 12,000 horse-powers. On the Kennebec, Augusta. gives 5,000 horse-powers, w· aterville 8,900, and the following towns, as estimated from somewhat imperfect data, Emden and Solon 4,980, Anson and Madison 9,000, Skowhegaii 5,700; Fairfield 7,300, etc. On the Androscoggin, Lewiston ( three powers) gives 14,500 horse­ powers, gross, Brunswick about 8,600, Lisbon 6,740, Livermore 3,200, Jay (three powers) 4,950, Rumford, 21,000, etc. These 6 HY:DROGRAPHIC SURVEY. combined furnish about 150,000 horse-powers, gross measurement, and suitably applied will net over 105,000 horse-powers or 6,300,- 000 spindles, nearly fifteen times the number operated at Lowell. The powers specified, it is to be remembered, are only the prin­ cipal falls on the lower sections of the main rivers. To these require to be added the hundreds of powers upon their tributaries and at the outlets of omr hundreds of lakes. To these also is to be added the power not represented in these returns and hardly suspected to exist, which really does exist upon even our main rivers in their lower sections, but which the unpractised eye of the common observer does not discover. Such is the character of our rivers, both great and small, though not of all in equal measure, as to the hardness of their banks, their ledgy channels, their inlia­ bility to destructive flowage upon elevations of their surface, that they are susceptible of being to a large extent converted each into an unbroken series of water;.powers from mouth to fountain head; each dam ponding the water back to the privilege next above, and so on, until nearly all the descent of the stream is turned to use for motor purposes. The powers thus susceptible of creation by human skill and the investment of capital, are not represented in this Report. They remain to be disclmied by more sp<~cific inqui­ ries and by exploratfons in the field. They now appear only as tracts of river of somewhat stimulated rapidity and quite unsug­ gestive of manufacturing capability, but are in reality among the most valuable of powerEI for practical use, being sustained, when once appropriated, by comparatively long and large ponds formed by the dam, upon the river itself. These powers, I say_, in their several varieties, require to be added to the short list detailed, be­ fore an adequate estimate can be formed of our water-power in even the portion of the State ostensibly represented. The figure before given is much too small as an. index of the power that can be obtained in the represented territory by the appropriation for storage purposes of the numerous and large reservoirs connected with' the rivers. This may be inferred from one or two facts which I will state, borrowing them for the purpose from the materials already accumulated and elaborated for the Final Report. The mean head raised by dams upon the Umbagog Jakes is eleven feet, which involves the storage of over 30,000,000,000 cubic feet of water. This storage is effected, it will be noticed, from the surplus of the spring snow-meltings, and will therefore., during the SECRETARY'S REPORT. 7 process of accomplishment, not impair the manufacturing capacity of the Androscoggin, which has during the period of storage an immense surplus over and above all possible manufacturing de­ mands. Suppose now it be required to treble the power at Lewis­ ton. For six months in the year the natural flow of the river is sufficient to multiply the power three-fold without the aid of stor­ age. For three of the remaining six months, or more definitely, for the working hours of about seventy-eight days in late nummer and early autumn, not far from 9, 700,000,000 cubic feet would have to be disbursed from the reservoir to treble the power. l~or the remaining three months, during which the river would be at a stage intermediate between low run and the three-fold stage 13ought, about one half as much reservoir water would be required, or 4,800,000,000 cubic feet, to bring the natural flow to the required flow ; so that after having raised the power two hundred per cent., there would still remain 15,500,000,000 cubic feet of storage for further use and to supply the necessary waste of water in the hours of non-use. The net power on the Androscoggin wit'hin the limits of Lewiston is now 10,666 horse; so that the astonishing aggregate of 31,998 net horse-power can be obtained in this single town without quite half exhausting the reservoir of the U mbagog chain of lakes alone. This is fifty per cent. more than th,9 total sum of water-power in use in the whole kingdom of France a few years ago. The dam at the outlet of J\Ioosehead lake commands a head of seven feet over the whole surface of one hundred and twenty square miles. By lowering the channel of the outlet, a head of ten feet can be secured, and this head, it is estimated, the country tributary to the lake will furnish every or nearly every year, out of the surplus of the spring snow-meltings. A head of ten feet would give about 33,000,000,000 cubic feet of reserve water. To increase the present mean summer run at Augusta-175,500 cubic foet per minute for eleven hours a day-by two hundred per cent. for the working days of the ordinary period of low run, would co:nsume about 18,000,000,000 cubic feet, leaving about 15,000,000,000 for water waste and for the deficiency (below the treble stage desired) in the months anteceding and following the three of lowest run. It is to be remembered that the 33,000,000,000 cubic feet on the Kennebec are available not upon the 15-foot fall at Augusta alone, but upon much the greater part of the whole descent of 1,071 feet from Moosehead lake to the tide; that the 30,000,000,000 cubic 8 HYDROGRAPHIC SURVEY. feet on the Androscoggin are available ( though not wholly in our own State) in their fall of 1,256 feet from Umbagog lake to the tide at Brunswick ; so that upon these two rivers the natural low­ run power is susceptible of increase by hundreds of per cent. Great however as is this increase, it is relatively less than can be attained upon some of our smaller riven3 whose reservoirs are rel­ atively larger, as the St. Croix, the Presumpscot, and the Fish. It would seem therefoJe a very modera.te estimate that the power in the represented territory can be increased as a whole one hun­ dred per cent. by the use of its associlated storage basins, or to 600,000 net horse-powers. In this estimate no. reference is had to the increase that can be commanded by means of strictly artificial reservoirs. The power at Lowell is 91 ,000 net horse-powers, and Lowell has a population of 32,000. To put this in a different form : At the very lowest estimate of the mechanical horse-power measured against human energy, it can be reckoned equivalent to not less than thirteen man-powers; so that our represented water-power in its undeveloped condition and at the low stage of the rivers, must be judged to possess the working force of nearly four millions of men, and to be susceptible upon improvement of an efficiency equal to that of well nigh eight millions of men.