Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Aacdemy Press, 1984), 19; “Golden Decade for Philadelphia Water,”
Engineering
News-Record
159 (1957), September 19, 37.
21. The financial security of the waterworks took longer than popular acceptance
of the water supply. See Martin J. McLaughlin, “Philadelphia's Water Works from
1798 to 1944,”
American City
59 (1944), October, 86, 87.
22. See Charles Jacobson, Steven Klepper, and Joel A.Tarr, “Water, Electricity, and
Cable Televison: A Study of Contrasting Historical Patterns of Ownership and
Regulation,”
Technology and the Future of Our Cities
3 (1985), fall, 9.
23. Letty Donaldson Anderson, The Diffusion of Technology in the Nineteenth
Century American City: Municipal Water Supply Investments (Ph.D. dissertation,
Northwestern University, 1980), 102-104, 117; Letty Anderson, “Hard Choices:
Supplying Water to New England,”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History
15 (1984),
autumn, 218; Joel A.Tarr,“The Evolution of the Urban Infrastructure in the Nine-
teenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in
Perspective on Urban Infrastructure,
ed. R. Han-
son (National Academy Press, 1984), 30, 31; Ernest S. Griffith and Charles R.
Adrian,
A History of American City Government, 1775-1870:The Formation of Tradi-
tions
(University Press of America, 1983), 198-217. In an important case study con-
cerning the financing of physical improvements in Chicago, the historian Robin L.
Einhorn makes an impressive alternative case for privatization in this period. Uti-
lizing special assessments, the city government operated through what she labeled
the “segmented system,” especially between 1845 and 1865. Einhorn argued that
“what made this system 'segmented' rather than simply elitist was that a voice in
decision making . . . required the ownership of property that was 'chargeable' or
'interested' in the decision at hand. An owner had to show that he owned a lot that
was liable to a particular special assessment before he could participate in the deci-
sion to levy that assessment.” The segmented system, Einhorn concluded, did not
disfranchise the propertyless, but was a way to distribute costs and decision-making
power among the propertied class. Einhorn's analysis is especially persuasive with
respect to public works projects such as street paving and bridge building. How-
ever, as she suggests, water and sewer systems could not be segmented “with the
rigor of street projects or fire limit rules” because they required central planning
and large initial investments. See Robin L. Einhorn,
Property Rules: Political Economy
in Chicago, 1833-1872
(University of Chicago Press, 1991), 16-19, 133.
24. See Anderson, “The Diffusion of Technology in the Nineteenth Century
American City,” 108.
25. The water commission discovered that the Indians called Long Pond “Cochit-
uate.” The mayor proposed the name change to Lake Cochituate—thus the name
of the aqueduct. For information on Boston's water supply, see Nelson Manfred
Blake,
Water for the Cities: A History of the Urban Water Supply Problem in the United
