The Sunday morning news. [volume] (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1886-1891, 1886-12-05
THIS CITY'S GREAT PUMPS.
ROW TIE WATER FROM THE RIVER IS
CARRIED TO OUR TUALBLERS.
A Visit tie the Water Works at Belle
vilIe-A solid Column of Water 200
Feet HIgh-Evidences OF Wnste and
Neglect by the Board of Works.

Neglect by the Board of Works.
aNever seen the Jersey City Water
Worksl" exclaimed President DATE, of the
Board of Finance, to the SUNDAY MeRNINe
News editor, the other day. The News
man had just ventured to make an obser-
walton of that purport; and the ready
witted Commissioner had absorbed it. "A
man who has been in active newspaper
work here for twenty years, as you have,
ought to be ashamed to make such an adj
mission. If you'll drive out there with me
some day I'll help put you in possession of
some information that every properly
equipped newspaper man in the city ought
TO have"
Sat your pleasure" returned the
abashed scribe.
ssuow'll Thursday do?"
'sItll suit me If it'll suit you"
So Thursday was hit upon. Some mali
cious scamp gave the clerk of the weather
a private tip that thin blooded scribbler
was going to venture out upon the Mead
ows in an open buggy, and he turned on
the north winds for all they were worth,
and set them prancing with devilish fury
up and down and over and across the I'M
sheltered stretch of prairie that lies be-
tween the Hackensack to the Passaic
rivers. Boreas commenced his pranks
with he News mans face Chief Engineer
Ruggles's speedy six-yesr-old did some tall
running; but, even when he thought him
self pursued by Pennsylvania locomo-
tive, he didn't run half so hard as the ven
turesome scribbler's eyes and nose did.
While he was plying his frozen
handkerchief, one of his ears dropped
feeling, and his knees would have
shaken under the robe if they had not been
frozen stiff before they thought of shaking.
And when at last he was thrown into one
of the big furnaces in the vast works on
the banks of the Passaic, at Belleville, to
thaw out, he was as hard and rigid as if he
had been dug up out of the Catacombs.
When he had recovered some of the few
senses with which nature had endowed
him, the scribbler found the grey-whis.
kered superintendent of the Water Works |
at his side. The gentleman bears the
honored name of Ksarney, and is relative |
of the gallant "Phil." He has been for |
nearly thirty years at the head of affairs in
the City's Water Works, and knows pre-
sumably something about the manner in |
which business is done in them.
The first thing to be done was of course |
to see the stream from which the city's |
drinking water is drawn. The Passaic |
River at that point is very narrow. The |
NEWS man thought he might have thrown |
stone across it if he had tried, but he |
didn't stop to undeceive himself by trying. |
He only saw that on the other bank was |
long line of villas, with their outhouses |
overhanging the stream. The view either /
up or down was of factories pouring their |
refuse out into the stream through water |
pipes The water looked brown and dirty; |
on its surface filth of every conceivable |
description bobbed up and down ON the |
ripp-es the wind made. The s'intakc" |
was right there. The water flowed under |
the overhanging pier on which the NEWS
man stood, and into the pipes through |
which it is conducted to our homes.
s'Wherc's the filtering apparatus ?" asked
the scribe.
1--WE have none," was Kearney's re-
Spouse, sNewark filters her water at the |
works q little up the stream. and always |
has on hand in her intake days cleaned |
and purified supply. But we have nothing |
of that kind here We have sunk this |
wooden crib you see here to q depth of
four feet, so that the surface water is not
sucked by the engines into the supply
pipes. 1t passes through screens at tie
little building little removed from the
water front, and they seem to keep out the
bigger Masses of deleterlous stuffs; but
we have no process here of filtering at
ALL
When the visitors passed the little build
ing referred to, two men were cleaning the
screens. They had been drawn oat for the
purpose. On the ground outside the house
door lay three or four good sized tom
Gods.
ssWhere did they come from?" asked the
scribe.
son. they got in through the screens,
was the cheerful answer.
1t occurred to the NEWS man that if the
screens would let fish of that size into the
supply pipes, what they would serve to
keep out was of small account.
The river level is not up to the level OF
any section of this city, and as the water
cannot be.conducted to town by natural
gravity, it is utilized through the agencies
of three great pumps. Two of these are of
the Worthington pattern-great red ma
chimes with pistoDs in perpetual and easy
motions-in building on one side of the
roadway and one operated in a building
on the other side of the roadway is of the
Cornish pattern. Windows at one end of
the Worthington pump rooms looked out
upon six great circles of iron. These were
the ends of the SIX eighteen feet boilers
that furnish the steam for the power to
run the engines. Coal grimed men were
shovelng coal by The ton into The flaming
red mouths Of half dozen great furnaces
beneath. The coal supply, scattered IN
heaps of ton perhaps, in each, over the
ground outside looked slender and chilly.
About thirty five tons day are consumed
in the furnaces. Kearnsy said that 400
tons lay outside. but the reporter guessed
that 100 tons more or less would more
closely indicate the quantity, and gave Mr..
Kearney credit for attempting to shield his
bosses of the Board of Works from the
suspicion of neglect in having failed to lay
in an adequate winters supply. The coal
heaps at this seasoa should mount half
-. l:s.l, traas IL, tho 1rards hut