WATERWORKS ITEMS FROM ALL PARTS
From Special Reports to FIRE AND WATER ENGINEERING.
Doming, N. M., will soon have a waterworks system.
Enderlin, N. Dak., is building a waterworks system.
Hartford, Conn., will probably filter its water supply.
Stillwater, Minn., may change its source of water supply.
Columbia, S. C., has contracted for a $154,000 waterworks system.
Colorado Springs, Colo., employs three inspectors to detect water stealers.
To extend the waterworks system of Jacksonville, Fla., will take $90,478.25.
The council of Manitowoc, Wis., has authorised tne sinking of three new wells.
Princeton, Ky., has now $35,000 available for building a waterworks system.
The Federal government intends to control the waters of lake Tahoe in Nevada.
A large water meter is being installed near the 1 .eavenworth, Kan., crematory.
The cost of the new waterworks system at Pipestone, Minn., will be $28,000.
At Klizabeth, N. J., the feeling is tending towards a municipal water supply.
Miles City, Mont., is installing a neiv pumping plant, and will soon start sinking a new well.
It will cost $12,000 to lay mains for the newly annexed territory on the south of Wyandotte, Mich.
The scarcity of water at Salt Lake City, Utah, is exciting grave fears as to the city’s fire protection.
The Mount Tacoma. Wash., Water Supply company has decreased its capital from $250,000 to $50,000.
At Bolivar, Tenn., the new waterworks system will have a 50,000-gallon tank on a 120-foot tower.
At Danville, Ill., is being laid a big water main between tbe Hegler zinc plant and the city waterworks.
The source of supply for the new waterworks system at Gadsden. 111., will be the same as at present.
Port Townsend, Wash., is now supplied with Ohmpia mountain water from the headquarters of Snow creek.
The system of installing domestic water supplies for houses is becoming very popular in tbe Southern States.
Chicago has now available for lire purposes 1,978 and a quarter miles of water mains and 20,349 lire hydrants.
The Cedar Rapids, la., waterworks plant paid a net profit of $11,933.35 during the year ending June 30, 1905.
Tbe capacity of the new pumping engine at the Sixty-eighth street pumping station, Chicago, will be 20,000,000 gallons.
At Atlanta, Ga., the legislature has passed the Jenkins bill to appropriate $75,000 to install a new waterworks system.
A local water company has been formed *o supply Roseland, X. J.. with water from Essex Falls, at a cost of $5,000.
Mains are being laid by tbe. Portsmouth, Suffolk and Berkeley Water company in the principal streets of Port Norfolk and Pinner’s Point, Va.
Because of the deep wells and there not being wind enough to keep tbe wind-mills for the pumps going, there is a water famine at Otis, Kan.
The new water system for West Allis. Wis., will he installed by the American Light and Water company, of Kansas Citv, Mo., at a cost of $42,677.77.
Near Boise. Idaho, a dam for power is being built, forty feet high and seventy-live feet wide across the Payette river. Four turbine waterwheels will be installed.
The new waterworks system at Bloomington, Ill. on which work has been begun, will cost $7,725. Tbe new well has been satisfactorily tested both for quantity and quality.
The source of supply for the new waterworks system just voted for at Pleasant Grove. Utah, is Battle creek, with a vertical fall of fifty feet. It is distant one mile from the town.
Chicago has awarded the contract for a sixteeninch main on Ninety-fifth street, and is rushing that work and completion of tbe new tunnel from Hie cnlis to the Sixty-eighth street pumping station.
At Klizabeth, X. J., the rates on French roof houses have been reuuccd from $15 to $10 yearly, with a big discount 011 bills paid within a certain time. Several concessions have also been made to the municipality.
According to the statistician of the water company at Selma, Ala., the residents of that city use an average of 400 gallons of water per day for household and other purposes—a total of 400,000 gallons daily.
The Coolgardie goldfields’ pipe, in Western Australia, is 330 miles long and thirty inches in diameter. The proposed pipe for the Los Angeles, Cal., supply will be only 240 miles long, but of a much larger diameter.
At Sage creek basin, near Saratoga, Wyo., is being built a reservoir that will cover 500 acres of land to an average depth of sixteen teet. Its site is a natural basin with rocky sides and bottom, calling for extensive blasting.
Some anxiety has been felt at the new town of Antler, N. Dak., over the water situation. Vari 011s wells have been sunk, without success, but recently good water in abundance has been found at a depth of about eighty-five feet.
The contract for a new waterworks system at Colville, Wasn., has been let to Naylor & Naylor, of Lewiston, Idaho. The work will lie done in converse kalomein iron pipe, and will be finished in about two months. 1 he bid was $11,825.
It is expected at Providence, R. 1., that the committee on water will soon report recommendations for adding to the city’s pumping facilities by tbe erection of a pumping station with machinery of not less than 15,000,000 gallons capacity.
A Cedar Rapids, la., a correspondent writes, that the Marion Water company is building a second large reservoir, whose depth will be fourteen feet. It will be fed by springs. The excavation work is in solid rock, and the walls of the basin are extra heavy.
The Walla Walla, Wash., gravity waterworks system will have its supply taken from Mill creek, fifteen miles east of Walla Walla, and carried through a pipe line to a reservoir of 5,000,000 gallons capacity, to be located on the town’s land, about two miles east of the city.
At 1’loresviile, Tex., a small test well has been bored lo a depth of 340 feet in the schoolhouse grounds, and an abundance of good water lias been found. If, in the opinion of an expert engineer, there is water enough, the work of installing a waterworks system will soon be begun.
Avon, S. Dak., has installed a waterworks system at a cost of about $13,000. Pressure is furnished by a tank on the top of a ioo-foot steel tower. The tank is twenty-four feet in diameter and twenty feet high, and has a capacity of 2,000 barrels. When filled, the water in the tank weighs 250 tons.
The thread system, which at present supplies Port Worth, Tex., with water, has a capacity of 3,000,000 gallons. By the addition of two wells west of tbe city, this will be increased by 550,000 gallons. When new machinery is installed at these wells and one or two more wells are added, the supply will reach 6,000,000 gallons.
To remedy a scarcity of water tbe Milwaukee Railroad company has purchased twenty acres of land near Aberdeen, S. Dak., on which to build a large reservoir, from which water wall be pumped to the roundhouse there, as the artesian water cannot be used for the locomotives.
On August 17 the council of Waukesha, Wis , tabled the waterworks company’s proposition for a franchise and directed that the mayor, comptroller and city attorney negotiate for the purchase of the plant, get figures on a new plant, and draw up questions to lie submitted at a special election on municipal ownership; all to be reported to the council September 6.
Belton, ‘l ex., having been reported as suffering from a lack of water, explains that the water was cut off for a few hours to put in a new’ fireplug that the standpipe and reservoir were both full of artesian water. The town does not depend on ore pump only, hut has two good Worthington pumping engines, with a capacity of 75,1×10 each, always ready. G. K. Ulbrieh is superintendent.
The large pumping station of the Lackawanna company, to drain its Keyscr valley coal mines at Scranton, Pa., has just been put into operation. It is automatically operated by an 800-horsepower motor, carrying two buckets that discharge 4,100 gallons every minute -A,000,000 gallons each twenty-four hours. Only three men are required each eight hour shift to operate the plant, thus doing away with nearly too men, heretofore employed as pump-runners in the group of mines, which now drain to one central reservoir in the lowest workings of the central shaft. The same pumping operation is to be made effective at all i.ackawanna miles where they are so advantageously grouped as to allow such undertakings.
Preliminary surveys have been made at Pueblo, Colo., for the construction of a submerger dam and reservoir designed for the purpose of supplying that portion of the city of Pueblo lying north of tbe Arkansas river with water under a contract made some time since by the board of trustees. It lias been contended by tbe water company tliat under tbe sands of the Fountain, even in times when the bed of the stream is perfectly dry, there is sufficient water to supply not only tbe city of Pueblo, but lo produce enough to admit of the company selling a large quantity for the purposes of irrigation. It is the plan of the water supply company lo construct a submerged dam near Pinion, This will be based on the bedrock of the stream, and will, if the plans of the engineers arc verified, force all the underflow of the stream to the surface. This will then be con ducted to the reservoirs, to be drawn upon when needed.
After having been subjected to a bacteriological test, the water supplied to Geneva, N. Y., has been pronounced “absolutely pure.”
I lie Newark, N. J., Sunday Call remarks editorially that the “State of New Jersey has acted with extraordinary liberality to the corporations it has created, whereby a belief has sprung up that these compani s thereby obtained an exist dice and power which were independent of the government, ai t times the courts have secur’d to foster this view. That it is false and intolerable has been, however, demonstrated upon critical occasion, more than once. The great rail roads learned it in 1884 and 1885, and the water monopolists know it now. The Last Jersey Water company and its subcontractor fail to comprehend that they are creatures who lie supine in the hollow of the hand of our government. They could lie obliterated tomorrow. Let them, let all who have mistaken the relations of citizens to government, keep a few first principles in mind and they will not need to be rebuked by the courts.”
At Mankato, Minn., more than half the water in the city is pumped from the artesian well at tbe gas and electric plant.
The renewal of the franchise of the Metropolitan Water company, of Kansas City. Kans., for thirty years is being discussed. It is stated that at present the company has a plant inadequate to supply the presenet needs of the city. The water has been bad, and the fire pressure weak for many months. The company now has fifty-seven miles of mains, and receives from tbe city $50 a year for each of 462 hydrants. Under the new franchise the company proposes to spend more than $500,000 in improvements as follows: Constructing a new pumping station; installing a forty-inch intake in addition to the present intake; installing a forty-inch section-line from the pump house to the receiving well; increasing the pumping capacity to 25,000,000 gallons daily, with a reserve capacity of 12,000,000 gallons, by installing two high-service pumps with a daily capacity of 12,000.000 gallons each and two lowservice pumps, with a capacity of 10,000.000 gallons each; increasing the boiler capacity to meet requirements; overhauling the present 9,000,ooo-gallon pump; building a settling basin and filtration plant, with a capacity of 12.000,000 gallons daily; laying a thirtv-six-inch feeder main from Quindaro, and about twenty miles of new mains over the city.