The One Thing Wanted to Make the Brooklyn Water Works a Perfect Work

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THE ONE THING WANTED TO MAKE THE BROOKLYN WATER WORKS A PERFECT WORK.

We promised in our account, last week, of the excursion over the whole line of the Brooklyn Water Works, to give a special article on the much-talked of proposal for substituting an arched conduit instead of the open canal required by the contract of the city with the Messrs. Welles,¹ the contractors. The canal is, (or was,) to be an open ditch, eight feet wide at bottom, with sloping walls eight feet in height—the bottom and five feet of the sides to be lined with clay "puddling,"² a feet in thickness. This open canal is to run 7½ miles from Hempstead Pond to a little east of Jamaica, and is to receive branches, (with one exception, open like itself,) from all the ponds. Where it ends, east of Jamaica, the flow of the water is continued 5½ miles in a covered conduit of stone and brick, to the Well Pump at East New York.

Upon a personal examination of the canal with reference to it as a part of the whole plan, and after conferring with those best authorised to judge in the case, and disinterested in it, we believe the occasion demands a clear and strong statement to the people of Brooklyn, the Water Commissioners, and the Mayor ³ and Common Council, that an adherence to the open canal part of the plan will leave a great flaw in a great work, and will be sure to result in enormous extra cost, in the future, to the city. As things stand, it seems to us necessary to boldly confront the fact that the canal should be stopped now; for, so far, little is done upon it except, in a part of it, the excavating, which we suppose would be done in about the same manner for a masonry conduit. The canal is excavated a mile or so at the furthest extremity; over the most of the rest the ground is yet untouched.

We will briefly run over the points of objection. Probably the most serious of these objections is as follows: The subterranean flow-line of the water of Long Island, where this canal passes, is in some places four or five feet, and quite generally from one to two feet, higher than the grade of the canal. It is not so much that this will make great trouble in the construction of the canal, flooding it continually in water, for that is the look-out of the contractors and their loss, if any one's; but it would be fatal to the security of the canal afterwards. The action of this water, enclosing the canal, and in some places quickened by the power of myriads of impetuous subterranean springs, (which abound hereabouts,) would beyond doubt subject the canal to disaster, and it seems to be equally certain, end at last in the abandonment of it as a total failure. Then either the supplying of water to Brooklyn would have to be suspended for many months—a temporary outside aqueduct provided, and a masonry conduit built on the canal location—or else a strip of ground purchased alongside the canal, and the conduit built at last, just as if for an entirely new work. The first of these contingencies is not to be thought of—while, if we realize either of the two others, how much more must we realize the preferable course of at once deciding on the change—of the immense saving every way it would be to the people of Brooklyn.

We have before alluded to some other objections to the open canal; the leaves, refuse, drift, sand and dirt generally, blown or falling into it, and eventually obstructing it; also offensive materials, of various kinds, imaginable and hardly-imaginable, that would somehow get in, or would likely to be thrown in by evil-disposed persons—these offensive matters a very unpleasant objection. Then snow storms in winter, and ice or half frozen snow, enough to obstruct the running of the water.

Because, considering the average grade of the whole length of the canal, a grade of only two tenths of a foot to the mile, obstructions would be sure to happen from accidental causes in summer, and from the falling of snow, and its congealing, or partially congealing, in winter. This grade of two-tenths of a foot to the mile will answer well-enough in a covered conduit, but subjects an open canal to the before-mentioned stoppages.

This is a hasty review of the question, intended as mostly suggestive, and as outlining the position the Commissioners and Common Council will see themselves compelled to take—and they might far better take it at once. We do not think the public fully realize this majestic improvement. For our Water Works plan, as conceived and carried out, and now near completion, makes one of the grandest proofs of the engineering, civilization, and sanitary spirit, anywhere through the Old or New World—with the single exception of that open clay-puddled canal, which spoils all. Let that be ruled out, and we have a perfect triumph, compact, enduring for ages.

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