construction seems to the Commission to be the plain duty of the State. There are obstacles to such an enterprise, but they are not insurmountable. In the area proposed to be flooded above the Sacandaga dam at Conklingville, there are about one hundred acres of forest preserve land. The execution of this project will therefore require an amendment to the State Constitution respecting the flooding of State lands. The same is true of other available locations for storage dam sites in the Adirondack mountains. In each instance the area of State land that would be flooded is small. An amendment to the Constitution that will permit the State to clear and flood State lands only where it shall be necessary to build storage dams in the interests of the people of the State and for a State revenue, these dams and reservoirs to be owned and controlled by the State, would be required to meet the exigencies of the situation. It is for the people of the State to decide, in view of all the facts, as to the expediency of such action. Finally, the studies and investigations of this Commission have already been carried far enough to make it appear probable that it can, with the aid of the Legislature, construct a dam upon the Sacandaga river at or near Conklingville in Saratoga county and enter into contracts with reliable property owners on the Hudson river that will pay the interest on the bonds to cover cost of construction, create a sinking fund that will in a reasonable time retire such bonds and return a handsome annual income to the State. The revenue from this new source, it is confidently predicted, will steadily increase to an amount that will lead the people to regret the early policy of the State in allowing its great natural water power advantages to be acquired by private interests. The report of our consulting engineer, John R. Freeman, and his assistants, accompanied with maps, plans and data, follows. Respectfully submitted, February 1, 1908. HENRY H. PERSONS, President. CHARLES DAVIS, JOHN A. SLEICHER, ERNST J. LEDERLE, MILO M. ACKER, State Water Supply Commission. Gentlemen. On August 6, 1907, under your direction, I began engineering studies pursuant to chapter 569, acts of 1907, which became a law on July 12th and is popularly known as the Fuller bill.* This act requires. a report of progress on or before February 1, 1908, and I have the honor to present one as follows: My engagement was to supervise the organization and early progress of the work, and terminates on January 31st, the pressure of other work preventing my continuing. I will therefore report in much detail, in order that the reasons for the several studies begun may be made clear, and that the information obtained and the methods employed may be matters of record. After a careful review of the specifications of the act, and a study of the topographic maps of the State and of sundry reports upon water power and water storage in the State of New York that have been published in previous years by the United States census, the United States Geological Survey, the New York Water Storage Commission and the State Engineer, it appeared to me best to concentrate the work upon the one or two large projects which after a review of sundry sites seemed to present the best opportunities for water power development under State control, rather than to spread the appropriation thinly over so broad a field of investigation that no conclusion could be reached on any one project. One of these sites selected for investigation is located on the Sacandaga river near the point where it empties into the Hudson *See Appendix - Below. at Hadley, about forty-five miles northerly from Albany. This site promised the best opportunity of any found for the construction of a great storage reservoir for regulating the flow of the Hudson river for the benefit of the thirteen' water power sites already established between Troy and Corinth, which have an aggregate fall of about three hundred and eighty feet. It would more than double their present power in time of drought and add upward of 70,000 horse power to the water power commercially available at these several sites already utilized upon the Hudson. It also promised an opportunity for building later a power house in connection with its dam site, where the yield, if drawn at a constant uniform rate twenty-four hours per day and seven days in the week throughout the year, would give 25,000 to 30,000 horse power measured on the turbine shaft, or if distributed mainly in ordinary working hours, or under a 40 per cent. load factor, would deliver at Albany or elsewhere as needed within a radius of fifty miles, from 50,000 to 60,000 electrical horse power measured at the consumers' end, throughout even the dryest year. This Sacandaga reservoir site also promised much more benefit than any other in the way of water supply for an enlarged Champlain canal, and for aiding in the increase of the mid-summer depth for navigation below Troy and for improving the quality of the water where taken for domestic purposes as far down' as Poughkeepsie, by reason of the greater flow and the dilution in summer of the impurities that come from the sewers of the towns above. Requests were soon received from the supervisors of Monroe county that a part of our work be devoted towards studying their problems of water storage for flood relief at Rochester and in the valley above it and of a power development in connection therewith, which should help carry the expense. Four topographic survey parties and one party for precise bench levels were organized as rapidly as possible for the upper Hudson and Sacandaga studies, under the general supervision of Mr. Horace Ropes, an engineer of wide experience in hydraulic construction, but it proved impossible to get our survey parties well at work until about Oct. 1st, because of delays resulting from the scarcity of good men under the exceptional industrial |