All the drinking water used in the Pittsburgh District, except that from artesian wells or similar primarily pure sources, has been contaminated by the sewage of towns and villages higher up the rivers. Through such contaminated water typhoid fever and other zymotic intestinal diseases are widely disseminated. Scarcely a town in the steel and coal district has not been devastated by an outbreak of this dread scourge. The condition of Wilkinsburg is typical, its water supply being contaminated by the sewage of more than twenty towns. The new filtration plant for Greater Pittsburgh delivers to most of the city a drink much superior in quality to the highly polluted waters generally used. But filtration is only a first step toward purity, and toward decreasing typhoid fever and the other water-borne diseases. Filtration removes a high percentage of the pathogenic bacteria by which these diseases are transmitted; but a highly contaminated water, such as that of the Allegheny River, purified even by the best methods of sand filtration, is not pure water. Intelligent users must at length realize this and demand for their own health not a purified water merely, but a primarily pure supply, safeguarded by sedimentation and filtration against occasional contamination. Within easy reach of Pittsburgh and nearly every one of its satellite towns, lie abundant sources of primarily pure supply, in the forest-protected mountain streams.
Hitherto the cost of purchasing a forested watershed and holding it as unproductive property has deterred cities from seeking such sources. That difficulty no longer exists. Forest lands have now a recognized and constantly increasing earning power. If a watershed is purchased at a reasonable price and is well managed, it will become, as stumpage further appreciates in worth, a valuable municipal asset. Or if a town is small and unwilling to assume the responsibility of such management; it can well co-operate with the state in developing a system which will secure to it pure water, and at the same time preserve to the state the earning power of its forests which are among its most valuable natural resources.
Domestic water supply, however, is largely a matter local to each town or each group of towns. But the wage earners of the whole Pittsburgh section are yearly vitally affected by the rivers in a different way. The earnings and even the lives of thousands, especially of those living in the low districts of the larger cities, are threatened by the winter and spring floods. These floods frequently result in losses to wage earners aggregating several million dollars a year. In the flood of March, 1907, it is estimated that more than 2,000 families in the river districts of Pittsburgh, and an equal number in the low lying sections of nearby cities, were forced from their homes or their stores by high water. Quantities of personal effects were injured or destroyed; lives were lost; and much suffering followed the winter exposure. The effect of the flood in increasing certain kinds of disease is shown by a comparison of the pneumonia and typhoid records in the flooded wards of Pittsburgh. Dr. Beaty of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Health gives us the number of cases of these two diseases in certain wards on the North Side, which are largely tenanted by laborers, and were partly inundated.
In March and April, 1906, when there was no flood, there were fourteen cases of pneumonia and forty-eight of typhoid fever.
In March and April, 1907, when the flood had a height of thirty-six feet, there were forty cases of pneumonia and 118 cases of typhoid fever, more than twice the number of the preceding year.
During the flood the water and dwellings in these districts became badly contaminated by human waste, since the flooding of toilets and sewers prevented their use. At the same time many families usually dependent upon street hydrants for domestic water had to make use of this extremely impure river water. This affected large numbers of people, many of them recently arrived foreigners unacquainted with methods of securing ready relief. But a more general suffering was occasioned by the loss in wages through the closing of large establishments whose plants were flooded. It was estimated at the time by one of the local newspapers that more than 100,000 people in the Pittsburgh District were idle for an average period of a week on account of the March flood of 1907. A typical example is the National Tube Works, where different departments were closed from ten to fourteen days, throwing about 10,000 men out of regular work. About 4,000 of these were employed for three days as laborers, cleaning up after the water subsided. The same thing is yearly repeated in many other large factories as well as on the railroads. It is no exceptional occurrence. A similar, though less severe flood occurred two months earlier the same year and another in March, 1908. It is indeed an exceptional spring when there is not a flood. The losses to laborers by curtailment of wages from this cause are seldom so excessive as they were in the flood of March, 1907, but they amount annually to more than $100,000. Moreover, this loss takes place in the winter, when the wage earner can least afford it.
DENUDED LAND DEVOID OF HUMUS, ON THE MOUNTAINS; LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR FLOODS ON THE MONONGAHELA RIVER.
RAILROAD BRIDGE DESTROYED BY FRESHET. THREE MEN WERE KILLED IN THE WRECK WHICH FOLLOWED.