by Al Seaman
On April 26 the Millstone published an artists rendering of the proposed Enerdu powerhouse that was distributed by Mayor Levi at the RiverWatchers public meeting. Many people have commented that it seemed out of proportion. I shared that view. To refresh memories it is reproduced below, with the amended rendering just after it.
There are a quite a number of things wrong with the original Enerdu drawing. The flour mill in the background is taller than it should be, the bridge piers are taller than they should be and are more closely spaced, the weir on the right should be at an elevation of 118 masl (meters above sea level) and no water would be flowing over it, the left end of the building is truncated, and building dimensions and levels are not quite accurate. In addition, it was a flat drawing without the normal increase in apparent size of closer objects as they would appear in a perspective representation.
I attempted to Photoshop the drawing into a closer version of reality, but finally gave up. There was just too much correcting needed and it was impossible to establish reliable image scaling. The next attempt was based on taking a photograph of the current mill from the point that seems to be the viewpoint for the drawing – just inside the gate of the Barley Mow patio. The photo was taken on April 15, 2013 when the river flow was recorded at Appleton as 93 cubic meters per second, and the river level at the Bridge St. bridge was measured at 117.99 masl. At the mill the water level would have been slightly lower, perhaps 5 cm. Supplementary photos were also taken of the scene with a five meter pole held from the bridge at specific reference points to provide a calibration scale for subsequent photo editing.
The image of the powerhouse was cropped from a scanned copy of the original sketch and overlaid on the above photo, with suitable adjusting of scale, positioning and perspective, along with other corrections.
The major differences include the fact that this version is during the spring flood (a low one this year) rather than the flat water depicted in the original. The discharge end of the building has been added. The water going over the weir is removed and replaced with a dry concrete weir with height of 118 masl (as per Enerdu drawings). The height of the three sections of the building are matched to the dimensions on Enerdu drawings included with the Environmental Report.
I will say no more other than the fact that the drawing is about as accurate as I can make it. I will let the drawing speak for itself.