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A WILD SCHEME
Proposition to Raise Water in Welland River
[Welland Tribune, 5 February 1909]
J.C. Gardner, civil engineer of Niagara Falls, Ont., proposes to give a deep waterway to Chippawa by raising the water of the Welland river ten feet to lake level, instead of dredging the channel deeper, doing away with the aqueduct at Welland. This he proposes to accomplish by building a dam across the river about 1 ½ miles west of Chippawa.
Mr. Gardner is evidently speaking with a very superficial knowledge of the subject. He says:
“One disadvantage of such a dam might be the flooding of land above the same, but in this case it is a negligible matter for at no point are the banks of the Welland river lower than Lake Erie level.”
In Welland town alone the damages would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The large and costly Riverside Mills would be put out of business, and a large part of Ward 3 flooded, including Cutler’s factory, etc. As the river is a dead level at low water for 20 miles west of Welland, similar flooding would occur in places all the way west as far as Caistor.
Lake level, it should be taken into consideration, does not mean any definite depth, as the height of water in the lake, and in that portion of the canal which is at lake level, varies from four to five feet, according to the wind mainly. If the river were connected with the canal, as Mr. Gardner proposes, the same variation would occur in the river, and Mr. Gardner’s “ten feet” would sometimes be very much more than that, and it is the maximum that would have to be provided against.
As it is now, at times of high water in the river, the water has run across the street and sidewalk just south of the south end of the river bridge here.
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