One hundred million gallons of seawater per minute didn’t sound like running water. It sounded like an avalanche falling through a burning forest.
Giles Croft stood on the timber check gangway suspended above Flume Number Twelve. He watched four million gallons of white, aerated salt water thunder through the concrete trough every sixty seconds.
The air in the water chute was thick with cool, salty mist that coated his oilskin sleeves and condensed on the brass barrel of his pitot tube.
Beside him, Aldous Swift-Current was checking the speed profile of the discharge water chute with a brass current meter.
“Mean exit speed is fourteen point two feet per second, Master Giles,” Aldous shouted over the roar of the waterfall.
“The high-pressure jump forms forty feet down the sloped apron, right in the center of the heavy riprap basin.
The ten-ton granite armor stones are draining away ninety-five percent of the striking force before the water merges with the Atlantic rollers.”
“Check the boundary shear on the apron toe,” Giles ordered, his eyes tracking the churning white boil where the discharge collided with the open ocean.
