Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
water production increased dramatically with the aqueduct, availability of
supplies tended to favor the middle class over the poor. Affluent lower
wards, for example, received more pipes than poorer upper wards.
40
Major projects in a few other cities followed the construction of the
Croton Aqueduct. Boston completed its aqueduct (half the length of the
Croton) in 1848. Another major engineering feat, much of the Cochituate
Aqueduct ran through deep trenches covered with dirt. It terminated at
Brookline in a 20-acre reservoir, where the water was then moved along
large mains to two distributing reservoirs. The cost of the project was
approximately $4 million.
41
The Washington Aqueduct, built to supply the
nation's capital with water from the Great Falls of the Potomac (14 miles
from the city), began construction in 1857 and was completed in Decem-
ber of 1863.
42
Distant sources of supply received great attention from major cities
because they offered large and dependable quantities of water, but also
because they provided alternatives to polluted or infected sources in the
local area. Smaller communities, without a sufficient tax base or other
financial resources, were hard pressed to seek distant sources. For many
communities the lack of viable options for dealing with polluted water sup-
plies was the weakest link in the early systems.The transformation of proto-
systems into modern waterworks required methods for ensuring—or at
least improving—water quality. The gradual introduction of filtration and
new techniques for water distribution held some promise for accomplish-
ing that goal.
Complicating the search for pure water was the fact that determining
what constituted a tainted supply was little understood in the Age of Mias-
mas.Taste and smell substituted for scientific testing in most assessments of
water quality. Some physicians warned patients not to drink hard water or
water with vegetable and animal matter in it, fearing that it would harm the
kidneys or produce stomach and intestinal maladies. In 1873, the president
of the New York Board of Health, a chemistry professor at Columbia Uni-
versity, advocated the consumption of lake or river water stating that
“although rivers are the great natural sewers, and receive the drainage of
towns and cities, the natural process of purification, in most cases, destroys
the offensive bodies derived from sewage, and renders them harmless.”
43
It was the British physician John Snow's research on cholera in the 1850s
that established a clear link between epidemic disease and polluted water
that wasn't based simply on the test of the senses. Snow's work on water-
