The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1872-05-19
The Great Water PrOblem-Subterra-
mean suppl es-Our Own Necessities
and How to Meet Them.

Our recent articles on the scarcity of water
and the danger which, from this source,
threatens this city, have awakened, as oul
numerous communications day after day
prove, lively interest and even anxiety in the
community. Our foresight has been noticed
and approved, and our interest in the welfare
of the public has been commended. An ounce
Of prevention, it has been said, is worth 0
pound Of cure. Prevention Of the evil ought
to be the natural and certain fruit of anxiety,
and we shall rejoice, feeling that we have not
spoken to the public in vain, when the work OF
| prevention is fairly begun for work we'll
| begun is work half done.
TO insure success, however, we must agair
| return to the charge. 1t is our determination
that our people shall not be permitted to plead
| ignorance of the possible and even probable,
evils which, in regard to this matter of water
| supply, lie before them. The early and in
tense heats have given us timely warning to
prepare for the worst, and we naturally cast
| around us to find some means of satisfying
the thirsty and sun-scorched earth. Ascending
| above the earth's surface into the region OF
| clouds and amid the vast upper currents OF
moist air from the tropics, we find there an
abundance of water, if it could only be con-
densed and abundantly distilled upon the soil.
This, however, in the present over-heated con-
dition of the United States east OF the Mis-
sissippi River, seems impossible, so that, even
on the shores of the ocean and beneath the
Ia ~,
doomed to the fate of the Ancient Mariner
Water, water everywhere,
And not drop to drink.
But before the worst can como to the worst,
and before our present supplies Of the precious
liquid are exhausted by the blaze of the sum-
mer sun, we have it in our power greatly to
increase them by few simple and COM
paratively Inexpensive means. We have
already spoken of the necessity of economizing
the ordinary amount of water in this city and
in all our larger towns and cities But to be
on the safe side, and to secure the greatest
abundance of the cleansing and health-giving
agent, we should at once begin to make large
acquisitions on the subterranean reservoirs Of
nature, ever full and free in their crystal dis
charge. The most recent and scientific exami-
nation Of the subject has demonstrated the
danger of using common well water for drink
ing and cooking purposes. Biologists have
lately shown in the most conclusive manner,
that the strata from which our wells are fed
have been most seriously polluted by the
sewage escape, not only in our large
centres of population, but in villages and often
in country seats Scarcely county or
district in the land is exempt from this plague
spot. Sparkling and bright as the water
may appear, it has been contaminated by the
most poisonous and filthy excretions, and the
draught of it, under favoring conditions, if
slow in its operations, is as deadly as the dose
of hemlock, and is quickly followed by the
outbreak of pestilential epidemics In the
opinion recently expressed by an experienced
physicist of the Royal Commission on the
Water Supply of London, ''the sources even of
our deep well-water supply in the lower ter
tiary sands and in the chalk are thus to some
extent polluted and injured nor do the great
and perennial springs supplying our rivers
altogether escape the evil" But without the
increase of water supply by the construction of
artesian wells is an acknowledged possibility.
In the city of London more than seven mil
lion gallons are now daily obtained from
the profound chalk strata on the southeast of
the metropolis, and there is no sign of any
abatement in the gushing floods from these
artesian bores. London, however, has been
very scanty and parsimonious in its provision
for such work, and nature has not done as
much for her as for many other cities ON the
Continent of Europe and in America. The
well of Grenclle in Paris, is very large and
seventeen hundred feet in depth; the well of
Passy, over nineteen hundred feet deep, with
diameter of four feet at the surface and two
feet at the bottom, yields above five million
gallons daily Still q third artificial bore in
the north of Paris, La Chapelle, st. Denis,
penetrating the earth to the depth of over two
thousand feet, with q diameter averaging twice
that of the well of Passy, will yield
over ten million gallons daily, and would, by
itself, supply city Of three hundred thousand
inhabitants. These valuable structures are
being rapidly multiplied in Paris and other
cities of Europe and there are no reasons why
they would not prove equally successful in our
country If these subterranean waters ore
tepid, as at Passy and Grenelle, from the inter.
nal heat of the globe, they are pure and peren-
NAL. Allowed to fill spacious reservoirs and to
cool to surrounding temperatures, they would
doubtless prove invaluable auxiliaries te
the water supply in dry and rainless districts
and greatly relieve the distress Of both man
and beast. 1t is also highly probable that
such waters would be much less exposed to
contamination than even our Croton, some OF
whose springs are liable to be fouled by the
presence of matter drained from small vii
lagos or farm yards contiguous to them. The
experiment Of such wells as we suggest, If ex-