Water for New York.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 4, 1 February 1906, Page 88

Water for New York.

The problem of finding an adequate supply of water for the constantly increasing population of New York is one now exciting the attention of the civic authorities, and elaborate engineering surveys have been made looking to a sufficient supply for the next fifty years. The sources proposed are the streams m the Catskill mountains, about one hundred miles distant, and cost of the improvements is estimated at i6t, 000,000 dollars. To bring the Catskill water to the city it is proposed to build a reservoir with a capacity of seventy billions gallons, near the sources of supply, and to tap this great artificial lake, which will cover 10,000 acres, by an aqueduct under the Hudson at New Hamburg, which will be extended to the Kensico reser voir. The dam of the Kensico is to be raised to give it a capacity of 25,000,000,000 gallons. Lower down, the water will be conveyed- into the Hill View reservoir, near Yonkers, with capacity of 500,000, 000 gallons, whence distribution can be made to the various boroughs by other aqueducts, one of which will be constructed under the East river, near Randili's Island, and another from Brooklyn, under the Narrows to Staten Island. Brooklyn, however, already has a Long -Island supply with a capacity of 100,000,000 gallons a day. In an abnormally dry season the present water supply would prove inadequate to the needs of the city. At full capacity the new Croton aqueduct can deliver 29^,000,000 gallons a day to Manhattan and with the 80,000,000 gallons of water available from the old aqueduct the total is 375,000,000 gallons a a day. During one month in the past year the city used 325,000,000 gallons a day, and it was by no means a dry season. Of the imminent danger of exhaustion in Brooklyn, Engineer Smith says in his report ■ — " The water supply in Brooklyn during the past season is almost without precedent in the history of a large American city. The consumption so outran the supply that there were hours in the day, and even days at a time when houses in upper levels are said to have been deprived of a public water supply." Brooklyn has the first claim on the city for a better water supply, but for the present it must be developed from the sand springs on Long Island. It is estimated that the system of supply for all the boroughs could be completed m ten years. A sufficient water supply New York must have, no matter what the expenditure is, if it shall continue to maintain its rate of growth, which in the fifty years calculated as the life of the system will increase the population to 10,000,000.