History of the Water Supply of the World / arranged in a comprehensive form from eminent authorities, containing a description of the various methods of water supply, pollution and purification of waters, and sanitary effects, with analyses of potable waters, also geology and water strata of Hamilton county, Ohio, statistics of the Ohio river, proposed water supply of Cincinnati.

by Thomas J. Bell

Brookline’s (Mass.) gallery is 762 feet in length; 6 feet below the river bed. Rate of flow is 490 feet per square foot.

Newark, N. J., tried the experiment of driven wells. They drove sixty-three-inch tubes 28 feet apart, 40 feet deep, into the bank of the Passaic, three hundred feet from the shore line. The tubes were attached to three lines of suction pipes, and the latter united in one twenty-four-inch main for the supply of their five million pump. As their expectations as to the quality and quantity of water were not realized, a well was substituted.

Columbus, O., has a gallery under the Scioto River, 600 feet in length, with a capacity of eight millions daily.

Toronto, Canada, has a basin excavated in an island of Lake Huron, opposite the city, 13½ feet below low water, and 3,090 feet in length; the rate of flow is 52 imperial gallons per square foot for twenty-four hours.

Lyons, France, has two covered galleries along the banks of the Rhone; the area of bottoms 17,200 square feet; capacity six millions, and rate of flow at lowest stage 100 gallons per square foot.

Toulouse, France, has three covered galleries along the banks of the Garonne River. The last gallery constructed is 1,180 feet long; capacity, two and a half millions; rate of flow, 228 gallons per square foot of bottom area.

Perth, Scotland, has a gallery in an island of the River Tay, 300 feet long, 4 feet wide by 8 feet high, 2½ feet below the surface of the river; rate of flow, 182 gallons per square foot per diem.

Genoa, Italy, has a gallery in the valley of the northern slope of the Mantine Alps, 1,181 feet above the sea level. It is 1,780 feet long, 5 feet wide and 7 to 8 feet high, and extends, in part, beneath the bed of the river Scrivia, transversely from side to side, and in part along the bank. It has a delivery of 6,412 gallons for twenty-four hours per lineal foot.

The city of Glasgow made two failures in attempting to furnish a supply by this system. The first experiment was the construction of a reservoir on the northern bank of the Clyde, below the level of the river. Beneath the bottom of the reservoir was thirty-two-feet cylindrical tunnels made of wedged-shape bricks without mortar. The failure was due to the inability to keep the interstices free from the deposit of impurities. In the second plan, they excavated shallow wells, 10 feet in diameter, 6 feet deep, and 20 feet apart, in the stratum of sand adjacent to the river. The wells were connected by pipes. The scheme was a worse failure than the first one.

It often happens, as in the case of Waltham, Massachusetts, in locating these galleries, that spring water is intercepted in place of the desired water of the flowing stream. The difference in temperature and increased hardness of the spring water, determine the class of water.