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The Water Bill

About This Item

  • Title: The Water Bill
  • Date: 11 April 1859
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01391
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 11 April 1859: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Thara Michaelis Kaylen Michaelis Francesca Boston Jason Stacy Stephanie Blalock Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Water Bill." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01391.xml (TEI)
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THE WATER BILL.—

The principal amendments made in the Water Bill by the Senate Committee, as alluded to in our Albany correspondence of Saturday, are—

Reinserting permission to build a covered conduit in place of the open canal east of Baisley's Pond;1 striking out the town rights' reservation of Queens and Suffolk Counties; reducing the amount to which bonds may be issued to $500,000; reducing the personal bonds that Commissioners must enter into; and giving the appointment of Commissioners to the Mayor and two-thirds of the Common Council.

Messrs. Welles2 & Co. are strongly in favor of making it obligatory on the Commissioners to contract with them for building the conduit instead of the canal, for half a million; but it would seem that these estimable and active Contractors have lost caste even with the Commissioners, as these last named gentlemen are now working hard to prevent the half million clause being reinstated in the bill. They seem to have come round to Alderman Backhouses3 opinion that the city has had enough of Welles & Co., and that it had better not enter into any fresh contracts with that firm until the old one is completed.

Notes:

1. Baisley's Pond was a major supply reservoir for the Brooklyn Water Works located in what is today the borough of Queens. It was a former mill pond, named after its owner David Baisley, who had sold it to the local water authorities in 1852. It was also occasionally referred to as Baisley's Pond, Jamaica Pond, or Rider's Pond. For a period in 1857, it housed a team of engineers, including Walt's brother Thomas Jefferson Whitman ("Jeff"). [back]

2. Henry Spalding Welles (1821–1895) was a contractor whose company H. S. Welles & Co. was instrumental in constructing the Brooklyn Water Works. He also contracted railroad lines in both Canada and the United States. [back]

3. Edward T. Backhouse (1808–1884) served on the board of directors of the King’s County Fire Insurance Company, and was elected as the company’s president in 1865. He also served as an Alderman for the Eleventh Ward in Brooklyn. [back]

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