Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
beds, by means of which it may be cleansed of them, before it is introduced
into the distributing pipes.”
49
Albert Stein, the designer of Richmond's waterworks, was the first to
attempt to filter a public water supply in the United States in 1832. Pump-
ing water from the James River, Stein prepared a sand filter in the reservoir,
but he could not get it to operate effectively. During the next 40 years, sev-
eral major cities, including Boston, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia, considered
installing sand filters, but they were too expensive at the time.
50
A major step forward, but not recognized immediately as such, was James
P. Kirkwood's “Report on the Filtration of River Water, for the Supply
in Europe, Made to the Board of Water Commissioners of the City of
St. Louis” (1869). In 1865, Kirkwood (an engineer) recommended that
Cincinnati and St. Louis employ filters in their water systems. At the time,
Kirkwood was engaged by a joint committee of the city council and the
waterworks trustees of Cincinnati to report on a new water source. He sug-
gested that one or more of the committee visit Europe to examine the fil-
ters in person, but nothing came of it.
Kirkwood was then engaged by the City of St. Louis to survey locations
for supply works along the Mississippi River. Upon recommendation of a
plan which included filtration, the water commissioners instructed him to
travel to Europe “and there inform himself in regard to the best process in
use for clarifying river waters used for the supply of cities, whether by dep-
osition alone, or deposition and filtration combined.” While he was gone,
however, opposition to Kirkwood's plan had led to a clean sweep of the
commission and replacement with members unwilling to underwrite the
cost of a filtration system. The city would not even publish his report as a
city document, and did not filter its water until 50 years later.
51
Kirkwood's report ultimately became a bible of sorts for those cities
interested in copying the European experiments. For several years after its
completion, however, little additional firsthand knowledge was gathered
about the various European systems.
52
By the early 1870s, a few cities began
to recognize the value of filtering water. Poughkeepsie, New York, built the
first American slow sand filter in 1870-1872; it was based on the designs in
Kirkwood's report. This decision was particularly noteworthy because the
filter was to be used on Hudson River water, a notoriously polluted
supply.
53
By 1880, there were only three slow sand filters in the United States and
none in Canada. But experimentation continued even if adoptions were
