Discussion. Cameron Highlands Hydro-Electric Scheme.

Abstract

Partners) said that in reading the Paper he had been struck by the close similarity between the conditions described in the ' , Cameron Highlands, which he had never visited, and those in the Adams Peak District of Ceylon, with which he was well-acquainted. This similarity had led him to compare the recently completed scheme described in the Paper with a rather similar one in Ceylon which had been planned just after the First World War by, he believed, the late Evan Parry and which, after a somewhat chequered history, had eventually been brought into service about 12 years ago.100. It seemed all the more natural to make this comparison because both schemes had been carried out by the same two firms of British Consulting Engineers. Because of that they offered a good illustration of some of the technical advances which had been made during the last 30 or 40 years in the planning and execution of hydroelectric schemes.101. Both developments were essentially high-head run-off river schemes utilizing the waters of a mountainous region clothed in dense tropical jungle and offering poor facilities for storage. In both schemes the lower slopes of the valleys had been planted up in tea over the last 60 or 70 years and in consequence, had been denuded of forest cover. Anyone who was acquainted with the tea districts of Ceylon-and he felt sure that it applied equally to the Cameron Highlands-would know that the clearing of the original forest cover from the steep hillsides had exposed the rock to heavy erosion. As a consequence, the rich topsoil had long since been washed away into the valley bottoms where it enriched the local paddy fields, while the rivers continued to carry, when in flood, a high load of suspended material. 102.In this respect,the Adams Peak District was probably rather worse than the Cameron Highlands because the planting up of the area had been started at an earlier stage and at a time when no-one paid heed to the problem of soil erosion.103. However this might be, it was clear from the Paper that the suspended loads in the streams supplying the Jor power station were matters of serious concern to the engineers. Such problems were by no means confined to Ceylon or Malaya and it would be interesting to learn how successful had been the measures adopted in the case of the Cameron Highlands scheme to mitigate them.104. The latter development had only just been brought into operation while the first stage of the Ceylon scheme, which was based upon a head-pond at Norton Bridge, had been in service some 12 years and it was therefore reasonable to suppose that considerable operational experience had, by this time, been accumulated.105. Unfortunately, power authorities were not usually very forthcoming in passing on to their consulting engineers the benefit of their operating experience.