Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
(a year in which the city suffered a great fire) and 1846 (a period in which
several epidemics rocked the city), civic leaders were embroiled in debate
over the water supply.
Those in favor of a municipal supply were persistent, and the issue
remained alive in the 1840s. A water referendum in December of 1844
resulted in a major victory for proponents of a municipal system. Long
Pond (later renamed Lake Cochituate) was selected as the city's source of
supply, to be purchased at city expense. But who should hold general pow-
ers over the water-supply system was not resolved.The city did not gain the
legal authority to establish a municipal supply until 1846.
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In that year the
General Court passed Boston's Water Act, which provided for the develop-
ment of Long Pond under the direction of a Water Board. The city was
authorized to finance construction with up to $3 million in municipal
bonds. (The entire Cochituate system cost almost $4 million.)
In October of 1848, the Cochituate Aqueduct opened, ushering in an era
of municipal control of water supply in Boston.The switch from private to
public management was not the simple reason for the significant improve-
ment. As the historian Fern L. Nesson argued, the completion of the
Cochituate system also changed the focus of water-supply debates. It placed
control and monitoring of the water system in the hands of experts, under
whose influence Boston was favored by avoiding future water shortages and
escaping the devastation of epidemic disease. “What had been a popular,
political issue,” Nesson stated, “became a technical issue initiated by an
administrative request to the General Court for permission to add to the
water supply system.”
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The success of the Boston system, therefore, elevated
the stature of technical experts and also reinforced the faith in environ-
mental sanitation.
Outside of a core of emerging major cities in the industrial East and a
few others sprinkled throughout the country, the transition from private
companies to municipal service more typically occurred in the late 1860s
and after. For example, Buffalo did not establish its municipal system (by
acquiring a privately held plant) until 1868.The Jubilee Spring Water Com-
pany had distributed spring water through log pipes as early as 1826, fol-
lowed by the Buffalo Water Company (1849), which tapped the Niagara
River.The latter's facilities provided the nucleus for the public system.
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The first waterworks in Chicago was not established until 1840, under
the auspices of the Chicago City Hydraulic Company. Lake Michigan was
used as the primary source of water, and the company built the city's first
