The Common Council and the Ridgewood Water Work

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THE COMMON COUNCIL AND THE RIDGEWOOD WATER WORK.

On the 15th of November last, the Common Council appointed a committee of inquiry into the changes and general management of the Ridgewood Water Works. The Commissioners had called in a Board of Engineers to report on the changes, and their report was submitted to a privately convened meeting of citizens; but it is claimed by the aldermen that none of them received the courtesy of an invitation. Hence they undertook to have an inquiry of their own.

So far as we can learn, they have not found out a great deal yet, more than the public already know. A meeting of the committee took place last night, when Mr. Kirkwood, the Chief Engineer,¹ was examined at great length, and Mr. H. S. Welles, the contractor,² volunteered some explanations. The only distinct impression to be gleaned from the three hours examination was, that Mr. Welles was a very smart man, and Mr. Kirkwood pretty dull—that if the Commissioners were not sharper than their engineer, Mr. Welles would be very likely to get the best of them if he chose to. But all the adroitness in questioning of Mr. D. P. Barnard, who was retained by the Committee to conduct the examination, did not, that we could see, extort, even from Mr. Kirkwood, anything materially damaging to the popular repute of the works.

We are inclined to think that the Committee will not find out a great deal, beyond what the public know—and unless it can be shown that the works will be essentially a failure, or that the cost will greatly exceed four or five millions, the critics of the Commissioners may as well after this give it up as a bad job.—So long as the suspension of Mr. Prentice involved the financial resources of even one of the Commissioners,³ there was room for a theory of suspicion with regard to motives; but his honorable conduct latterly, in paying the last farthing, even of compromised debts, removes the only plausible surmise which has ever shaken the public faith in the honor of the Water Board.

That these seven men have deviated from the original plans in many points is not denied; but the law under which they act empowered them to do so—had it not, they would have been stopped by injunction long ago. They may have erred in judgement in regard to some of these alterations, and the sharp contractor may thus have made even more than he at first reckoned on; but, with every disposition to anticipate corruption or failure where public interests are at stake, we must say that with all the various investigations, Legislative, Corporate, and private, which have yet been made, nothing more substantial than mare's nests has been discovered hitherto. And as a matter of common fairness, and for the sake of their own characters as public men, we hope that Mr. Back house and his associates,⁴ if they do not find something to complain of more weighty than the use of one kind of pine instead of another for hydrant boxes, will speak out freely and say so. If they can find that there will be a great increase of cost, or any essential detriment or failure of the works, by all means expose it; but the public are sick of quibbles about petty matters of detail. If, for about the price which the people expected to pay, the Commissioners have given us substantially the kind of Works that was expected, they deserve credit for their labors; and the Committee will suffer more than they, if it be deserved and they fail to give it. There is a limit, beyond which an alderman's zeal for the public treasure may degenerate into opposition to a great and necessary public work; we pray Mr. Backhouse and his friends, (for whom and their motives we have the highest respect) not to pass that limit, which they are undoubtedly approaching.

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