PROPOSALS FOR BUILDING GATE-HOUSES AND AQUEDUCT FOR THE NEW RESERVOIR, OF HYDRAULIC MASONRY, OPENED OCTOBER 26, 1858, BY THE CROTON AQUEDUCT BOARD, IN PRESENCE OF THE COMPTROLLER.

Contract awarded to Baldwin & Jaycox, October 27, 1858.

SURETY.

John M. Jacox.

Syracuse,

Cornelius Gardinier.

James H. Lidlie.

APPENDIX.

No. 2.

OFFICE CROTON AQUEDUCT DEpartment,
December 31, 1858.

To the Honorable the Legislature

of the State of New York:

The Commissioners of the Croton Aqueduct Department respectfully renew their application for payment of their account for Croton water supplied to the State Prison at Sing Sing; and as provision for its payment was not made at the last session of the Legislature, the cost of another year's consumption must now be added to the account.

An explanation of the principles upon which the account is constructed for the purpose of reducing the cost of the water to the state to the lowest sum which can be allowed, may furnish suitable information to new members of the Legislature.

1st. The ordinance of the Common Council establishing the rates for the water supplied forbids a less price to be charged to the largest consumers than one cent per one hundred gallons. The price to the state has been reduced by the Board to three-fourths of one cent for every one hundred gallons. Our city consumers of the largest class therefore pay one-third more than the state is asked to pay-or, in other words, the state must pay twenty-five per cent. less than they are obliged to pay. A large sugar refinery pays $4,500 a year, at one cent per hundred gallons, and is charged $80 for the building, and necessarily can use little or no water on Sundays and holidays, except it may be to get ready for work early on Monday morning.

2d. No price is charged for the enormous buildings within the prison walls, and no charge is made for the water consumed on Sundays and holidays, though the prisoners and other persons within the inclosure, consume water on those days as well as on working days.

3d. Instead of charging according to the quantity actually taken into the prison, we have adopted the lowest of all the guagings which have been returned by the Assistant Engineer during the last four years. They are as follows;

If the officers of the prison charge a price for the water to contractors for the labor of prisoners employed by them, the sum received must diminish the cost of the water to the prison. To the Board it is of no consequence, because their terms were adopted without reference to that circumstance.

The account now stands as follows:

The State of New York,

To the Corporation of the City of New York by the
Croton Aqueduct Board:

For Croton water furnished to the State Prison, at Sing Sing,
calculated on the lowest of five guages of the supply to the
prison, viz: 166,200 gallons a day, for 310 days to the year,
is 51,522,000 gallons, at three-fourths of one cent. per 100
gallons, for and during the year, from the 1st day of May,
1857, to the 1st day of May, 1858 ...

The two guagings which have since been taken exceed the above quantity, and without reference to the excess, the Board charges in the same manner as before for the year ending on the 1st of May, 1859..

No interest being calculated, there is due from the State to the City.

$3,864 15

3,864 15

$7,728 30

An examination of the facts of the case by the most competent officers of this department produces this impression-that the account does not require the state to pay in fact more than five-eighths of a cent per one hundred gallons; if quite so much, for all the water which the prison

takes into its capacious domain. It would seem to be a very trifling affair for the state to pay an extremely low and most inadequate compensation for an article which is of the highest necessity and value, as it nourishes the people, and does not corrode the engines, while the city is compelled by operation of law, to pay several hundred thousand dollars every year more than its fair and just proportion of the general state and school tax.

After all the labor and vexation which has been encountered by the President, in going six times to Albany in relation to the settlement of the old contract and the present supply, and after encountering the most extraordinary difficulties upon a clear and simple case, and knowing that the price had been reduced far below what equity and fair dealing required, what must have been the astonishment of the Board to learn that the Legislature, at its last session, had passed an act at the heel of the session, to pay $1,240 for the water furnished during that year. It was a surprise, and will not bear an investigation, and cannot receive attention. Done without the consent of the Board, no remark is necessary to ensure its condemnatiou. The only answer that can be given to that act is we have asked a certain sum of money for the two years' supply, of which we humbly request the payment. It is indispensably necessary that it should be paid.

The Commissioners of this department entertain the deepest reverence for the halls of legislation and the authority of government in the exercise of the highest attributes of sovereignty; but the greatest and wisest may be misled and sometimes commit mistakes, and the Board is sensible that from such a power there is no appeal or possibility of hindrance from the commission of error which the defenceless trustees of the Croton water works can interpose. The water may indeed be shut off. It might have been so ordered in the month of December last when the engineer passed through the aqueduct. But this last resort for the maintheance of the rights of the city, the Board has refused to adopt, because it is satisfied that the justice will be awarded to its patient forbearance, which has been sought from your predecessors in office, with the most disagreeable labor, and the most perfect sincerity of intention, to confer on the State terms so liberal that they cannot with propriety be rejected.

Most anxiously desirous of procuring the settlement of this small affair, by the amicable representations which have been made, your Honorable Body is humbly requested to consider the facts of the case, and