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.

The systems of supply may be arranged under three general heads, viz:

SPRINGS AND WELLS.

We have, under this name, nature’s resources for supplying our wants, whose facilities for furnishing the requisite supply depend upon the local rain-fall, configuration of the land, and the nature, or geological formation, of surface and subsoils.

Land springs are fed by rain-water, gravitating through loose permeable soils. The waters are very readily affected by infiltration of surrounding soils, and their course so easily changed in any direction that the permanence of such a source can not be relied upon.

Deep springs are fed by the waters falling upon and soaking down to great depths, and find their way to the surface through some fault, upheaval or other great geological disturbance, or between some impermeable strata. The most copious springs are in the tertiary strata, and the law, as regards their abundance, is “the rarer the visible springs may be, the more copious they would be found.” The permanence of the springs can only be relied upon after careful gauging, extending over several years.

Wells may be separated under the following divisions:

Shallow, or dug wells.
Ordinary deep, or pump wells.
Artesian wells.

The above fact is illustrated, practically, in London, where the water line of the chalk formation has been permanently lowered to the extent of fifty or sixty feet below Trinity high-water mark; and it is even stated that the level of the water in the wells, near the summit of this formation, rises, on the Monday morning, in consequence of the cessation of pumping in London during the Sundays. The experience of Liverpool corroborates this fact: that the Windsor well, having a depth of 210 feet, affected the surrounding wells to a maximum distance of a mile and three quarters. The celebrated engineer and originator of the well system of Liverpool, Robert Stephenson, from long experience and careful observation, offered the following conclusions (from Hughes water-works):

Statistics of the flow of the Windsor well show that the yield, in 1843, was 1,152,000 gallons per day; in May, 1848, 807,061 gallons; in January, 1850, from 705,667 to 634,752 gallons. The observations of the Green Lane well, in the same city, give the decrease in flow, per annum, at 4.7 to 6 per cent.

A plan has been proposed, by Mr. Bailey Denton, that, in order to increase the water-bearing stratum under London, sufficiently for a water supply, and also secure the well-known benefits of the filtration powers of the chalk, to let the Thames water pass down to the chalk, through the London clay, by means of wells sunk or bored. The objections raised against this plan is the possibility of the wells becoming choked by accumulation of impurities.

Mr. J. T. Fanning in his valuable “Treatise on Water Supply Engineering,” says:

POLLUTION OF WELL WATER.

It is stated that about fifteen millions of the British population live in towns and urban districts. Even if we assume, which is not yet the case, that all these people are supplied by water-works, the remaining twelve millions of county population derive their water almost exclusively from shallow wells, and these are, so far as our experience extends, almost always horribly polluted by sewage and by animal matter of the most disgusting origin.

As the contents of the water-hole or well are pumped out, they are immediately replenished from the surrounding disgusting mixture, and it is not therefore very surprising to be assured that such wells do not become dry even in summer. Unfortunately, excrementitious liquids, especially after they have soaked through a few feet of porous soil, do not impair the palatability of water; and this polluted liquid is consumed from year to year without a suspicion of its character.

Our acquaintance with a very large portion of this class of potable waters, has been in consequence of the occurrence of severe outbreaks of typhoid fever amongst consumers of this character of water.

The following table shows the average analysis of ten worst examples of well water (parts in 100,000 parts):

ARTESIAN WELLS.

Artesian is the name applied to water-springs rising above the surface of the ground by natural hydrostatic pressure, or boring a small hole down through a series of strata to a water-bearing bed inclosed between two layers. It was first practiced in 1100, in province of Artois, France, whence it derives its name.

The flowing water of the Kissingen spring, Bavaria, is produced by carbonic acid gas.

TEMPERATURE OF WELLS.

Invariably the temperature of water from great depths is higher than at the surface, this being due to some unknown source of heat in the interior of the globe.

In Scotland, the rate of increase of temperature, after permanent degree has been attained, is about one degree Fahrenheit for every forty-eight feet of descent.

At Grenelle, the temperature was found to be 1.8 degrees for every 106 feet of descent below the point of constant temperature.

The average rate of increase of temperature is one degree for a descent of from forty to fifty feet.

The temperature of the boring at Columbus increased, below the permanent line, one degree in every seventy-one feet.

EXAMPLES OF ARTESIAN WELLS.

The famous well at Grenelle, France, was commenced, by the government, in 1834, and after repeated failures and discouragements almost to abandonment, notwithstanding the urgent representations of the scientist Arago, that water would be found, the end was accomplished at the depth of 1,798 feet, in the year 1843. The diameter of the bore is 3½ inches; capacity, 600 gallons per minute; temperature of water, 82 degrees; height of flow, 128 feet. The expense attending this boring was 300,000 francs. The Passy well, near Paris, supplied from the same water-bearing stratum of the Grenelle, is 1,923 feet deep; 2′ 4″ inches bore at bottom; capacity, 5,582,000 gallons per day; height of flow, 54 feet. The La Chapelle well was started in 1866, with a gigantic bore of five feet seven inches, and by November, 1869, had reached a depth of 1,811 feet, the intention of the engineer being to extend it to a depth of 2,950 feet.

At the part of Paris named Butte-aux-Caelles, a well was started, in 1866, of six and a half feet diameter, to be carried down to a depth of 2,600 to 2,900 feet.

The Kent Water-Works, of London, is supplied by wells in the chalk formation, yielding 9,000,000 gallons daily. This great flow is due to what is known as a fault in the London basin strata.

St. Louis has a well 3,147 feet deep.

Louisville has a three-inch well, 2,086 feet deep, with a capacity same as the Grenelle well.

There have been nine artesian wells successfully bored in Cincinnati, a description of which will be found on page 107.

Charleston, South Carolina, has an artesian well 1,970 feet deep, from which pure soft water, of 90° temperature, flows ninety feet above the surface. It has five inch tubing on top and two and three-fourths inch diameter at bottom. The cost was $2,500.00, and the time required in sinking was a little more than a year. There is also an artesian well, in the same city, 1,250 feet deep, which discharges 25,000 gallons a day, of water, at a temperature of eighty-eight degrees, strongly impregnated with sodium and magnesium.

The desert of Sahara has a number of well borings, some yielding as high as 1,500,000 gallons daily. The depth varies from 130 to 400 feet, and temperature 70 to 77 degrees.

The Ohio State authorities undertook to supply the capital by an artesian well. After two failures, in attempting to tube out the quicksand, they succeeded (in November, 1857) in piercing through the rock, and at a depth of 149 feet a vein of water was struck that continued to wash away the borings for nearly 100 feet below. On the 1st of October, 1870, a depth of 2,775 feet was reached, but no flowing water obtained, when the undertaking was abandoned for want of an appropriation.

The record of the boring is tabulated as follows:

Temperature of well at bottom, 88 degrees, being uniform for 90 feet, at 53 degrees, will make an increase of one degree for every additional 71 feet. It was the opinion of Prof. Newberry, that, if water was successfully struck, it would be of a saline character.

Dubuque, Iowa, is supplied by a spring accidentally struck while tunneling in a neighboring drift.

At the upper basin of the Thames River there are seven springs, whose capacity is estimated at 32,000,000 gallons daily.

Liverpool, England, has four wells, with a combined capacity of 6,000,000 gallons daily.

Birmingham, England, has four wells, from which the water company derives 8,000,000 gallons daily.

Washington has over 400 wells, and Cincinnati about 300, nine of which are artesian, that were bored by private enterprise.

The deepest well in the world is near Berlin—4194 feet deep without piercing the salt formation.

WELL BORING.

The art of boring into the earth was practiced by the Chinese 2,000 years ago, the feature of their system being the percussive action of a tool suspended by a flexible rope.

The system now practiced in Great Britain, and on the Continent, is that in which the tools are attached to rods, consisting of a number of lengths, from ten to thirty feet long, joined by a separate collar, with a combined vertical and definite rotary motion, produced by a swivel joint in the upper length, or by suspending the rod to a “dog.” An ordinary well is first sunk to such a depth that the water below will rise, through the boring, into it. The object is to partly facilitate the object of boring, but chiefly to enable the pumps to be fixed without too great a length of suction. In deep wells, windlasses, driven by steam power, are used for operating the tool; the size of rod being, usually, 1¼ inch square; but for an eight foot boring, a 4½ inch square rod was used. To reduce the jarring and vibration, where borings are of considerable depth, the rods are hollow, in order to give same rigidity and resistance to torsion with less weight, and made buoyant, when working in water, by filling the rod with cork or light wood. A sliding joint, known as the “Oëuyenhausen joint,” is frequently used to bring the jarring only on that portion of the boring rod below. A shell pump is employed, in combination with the boring tool, for gathering the detritus, which obviates frequent raising of rod. Free-falling tools, guided by sliding joint, with catch or pall to raise same, are largely used. The weight of tool depends upon the depth and character of boring, that of the La Chapelle well being four tons.

In the oil-well boring of Pennsylvania, the rope (with about 50 feet of iron bar, sliding jaws, sinking bar, flat drill and sand pump attached) are exclusively preferred.

PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF WELLS AS SOURCES OF SUPPLY ONLY.

Where the surface soil and underlying drift possess sufficient porous qualities for absorption of a large portion of the rain-fall, together with the natural benefits of the impervious stratum beneath, having a proper axis of inclination favorable for conducting the infiltration of adjoining water-sheds, a large supply of water may be secured by the construction of dug wells for intercepting the subterraneous water.

Fanning has computed the following available quantities, under favorable circumstances, for percolation, from one square mile of porous gathering area (the mean annual rain being assumed at forty inches depth).

The city of Brooklyn gathers its supply by intercepting ponds. The source is the southern slope of Long Island, with a drainage area of 60.25 square miles. The plain is composed of fine sand, which is saturated with excellent water, the surface of which rises twelve feet per mile from the tide level at the shore, and which appears at the surface of the ground in springs and streams, where depressions occur in the ground level. The minimum observed flow occurred in 1880, and was equal to 9.4 inches on the water-shed. The available supply is, at times, quite small.

The city of Lynn uses a driven well partly, of which they say, in their annual report for 1880:

This method of securing water, however, is largely resorted to in the origin of water-works for small cities.

The Sanitary Engineer (Vol. v, No. 5) refers to a proposed well for Lincoln, Nebraska, a town of 15,000 inhabitants, that the contractor proposed to dig for the sum of $10,000. The estimated capacity will be ten million gallons a day, and the editor of the paper observes:

GRAVITATION

is that system of supply where the rain-water drainage of elevated water-sheds is gathered in natural or artificial storage basins, and conveyed through conduits by gravitation to the point of supply. The important points entering into the consideration of this method are:

The practical objections to the system are:

Surface waters from calcareous cultivated lands are polluted with but a moderate amount of organic matter; but, as some of this matter is almost always of animal origin, they are always undesirable, and may at any time become dangerous for domestic use.

If necessity compels their use, great care ought to be taken to secure their efficient filtration before they are delivered to consumers. This affords some, though by no means complete, protection from the propagation of zymotic disease through the agency of such waters.

They are generally very hard, and, unless artificially softened, occasion a great waste of soap when used for washing. Of all the waters of this description, those which flow from the surface, or from the drains of sewage farms, are generally most impure, because the time during which the foul sewage is exposed to the purifying action of plant and soil is reduced to a minimum.

Surface water from non-calcareous soil is generally soft but usually turbid and subject to animal contamination. Such water should always be carefully filtered.

ANALYSIS OF LAND DRAINAGE WATER FROM SEWAGE FARMS (PARTS BY WEIGHT OF 100,000 PARTS).

Much depends upon the knowledge of the climatic influences and rain-fall, extended, as it should be, through years of observation in determining the available quantity of water. Engineers, however, are liable to be too sanguine of the resources from water-sheds, by assuming, as a general rule, the average, rather than the minimum, rain-fall.

In 1868 nearly all the cities and towns of England, supplied by gravitation, suffered a water-famine, because of the overestimate of the available rain-fall, and in an insufficient provision of storage for an unusually long drought. Although the rain-fall for the year was above the average, yet it was unequally distributed.

The authorities of Manchester were obliged to publish official notices cautioning the inhabitants against waste, and, on the 3d of August, limited the supply to the city to twelve hours of the day, stopped the street watering, and diminished the trade supplies by one-half. In the middle of September the general supply of the town was further limited to eight hours per day. Many persons were prosecuted for waste or undue use of water.

Liverpool, Sheffield, Bristol, and several other large cities were obliged to resort to like severe methods enforced at Manchester. New York has been using every gallon that the aqueduct is capable of supplying; and, during the drought of last summer, when the head of water at Croton Lake was diminished, the capacity of the aqueduct was so reduced that the flow of water to the city was reduced, and a water-famine averted only by a Providential rain-fall.

The rule observed among engineers, in Great Britain, in determining the calculated rain-fall, is the deduction of one-sixth from the average rain-fall of twenty years for an average annual rain-fall of the three driest consecutive years in that period. But, as Mr. Homersham, C. E., observes, the axiom in mechanics, that the strength of a beam is the strength only of its weakest parts, applies also to gravitation water-works, their real strength or power of supply being only the minimum quantity they may be reduced to.

Allowance for absorption depends upon the geological formation and stratification, and for evaporation, upon local influences.

The following is taken from Hughes’ Water-Works:

In addition to the general configuration of the valleys, which ought to be deep and with precipitous sides, flanked by lofty hills, there are several other points which require attentive examination in projects for collecting water from drainage areas:

The geological structure is extremely important in estimating the capacity of a drainage area. It is not alone the rain which falls on the sloping surface of the hills, and finds its way by gravitation to the lower levels; but the effect of springs is also very great in augmenting the quantity of water. Many drainage areas are also valleys of elevation, in which the strata dip in opposite or anticlinal directions on opposite sides of the valley. In this case it is evident that much of the rain falling on a porous surface will insinuate itself between the partings of the strata, and flow off in a direction contrary to that of the surface drainage.

From Mr. Beardmore’s work we take the following, as the proportion or percentage of rain-fall which flows off the surface:

In England the allowance for absorption and evaporation ranges from nine to nineteen inches per annum. In this country it is from 75 to 100 per cent. greater.

We produce from “Fanning’s Water Supply” the following table of experiments on evaporation from surfaces of shallow tanks:

The following from the same author of the minimum flow of streams in cubic feet per second, per each square mile of water-shed:

From the different surfaces, its ratio of the annual rain, including floods and flow of springs, is approximately as follows:

MONTHLY EVAPORATION FROM RESERVOIR.

(From Fanning.)

AVERAGE AVAILABLE RAIN-FALL FOR STORAGE PURPOSES.

(From Fanning.)