Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-08-16


In such a work ii was inevitable that
there should been many accidents. In the
six years eighty men have been killed and
three times that number seriously injured.
Considering the magnitude and danger of
the work, this is inconsiderable as COM
pared with the less of life in the building
of other great tunnels. At many points
the work had TO be conducted with the
greatest delicacy; twice in the course of
the thirty miles the tunnel had to dip
down more than 100 feet in order to get
under swamps of great depth, the most
annoying of such swamps being on the
property of Jay Gould. Throughout its
entire length the tunnel is bricked, 1885,
100000 bricks, or enough to build 400
ordinary dwelling-houses, having been
used. When the work was at its hight
$500 men, mostly Italians, were employed
as laborers.
The following figures also give some
notion of the magnitude of the work; The
estimated cost when the plans were done
was $l5,000,000. Up to date the cost has
been S22,000,000, and it will rise to S25,-
100000 before the end is reached. The
exact length of the aqueduct from the
Croton dam to the Central Park reservoir
is 33s miles. The flowing capacity from
the dam to the Jerome Park reservoir, 10
miles above the city, will be 3l8,000,000
gallons every twenty four hours, and from
there to Central Park 250,000,000 gallons,
leaving 6S,000,000 gallons to supply the
city's new wards above the Harlem river.
In any account of this vast work, of
which New York is justly proud, some
mention must be made of the attempt to
swindle the city by some of the contract
ors. Above the brick arch of the tunnel
the contracts call for solid filling of earth
or rock 1t was discovered almost by acci-
dent that for whole miles there was no
such filling, although more than $1,000
00d had been paid the contractors on ac-
count of it. At the direction Of some of
the examining engineers holes were
knocked along the top of the tunnel at
intervals of few hundred feet, leading to
the discovery that the solid packing called
for was conspicuous by its absence. After
long delays and litigation, and the dis
charge in disgrace of number of the sub
ordinate engineers, this defect was reme-
died, at cost to the contractors of about
Sl,O00,0oO
The full value of the new aqueduct can
only be ascertained when there is some
device provided for gathering up and pour
ing into the aqueduct all the water afford
ed by the Croton watershed. 1t is going
to be possible to double at once the water
supply, but that will not take half the
water which gathers at the Croton dam
and goes to waste over the weir. Event
ually bigger dam will have to be built
in the Croton valley mile below the
present one, and upon that problem the
engineers of the water department are
now hard at work. The future dam, to be
known as the Quaker Bridge dam, will be
if the present plans are carried out, the
biggest dam in the world.
The practical effect of this dam will be
to wipe out the Croton river and substitute
for it lake, the surface of which will be
"a feet above the present dam. This lake
will be 10 feet deep at the new dam and
will hold about 40,000,000,000 gallons of
water, enough to supply New York for a
year, if not drop of rain was to fall. The
new lake will flood many miles of country
now occupied by farms, so that the pur-
chase of land was begun last year. Fifty
eight farms will be under ten feet of water.
Besides storing years water supply, the
Quaker Bridge dam will give New York
another great wonder to place alongside
of Brooklyn bridge and the Bartholdi
statue.
1t will not only be the biggest masonry
dam in the world; but it will be so much
the biggest that there will be no COMPARE
son between it and any other dam. 1t
will be 277 feet from the lowest point of
its foundation, and 17S feet from the bed
of the stream at the center to the top of
the parapet of the dam. The top of the
parapet is to be Is feet above the ordinary
water mark of the new lake, and seven feet
above high-water mark. At the bottom
the dam is 2l6 feet thick on the bed rock
the dam gradually decreases in thickness
to the top, where it is % feet thick. There
will be a roadway on top sunk between the
parapets three feet high on each side; the
view from this roadway will be equal to
that seen from the towers of the Brooklyn
bridge.
In the building of the dam trench
will be excavated nearly ninety feet deep
to the bed of rock beneath where the river
now flows. While this is being done a
new and artificial course will be made for
a river along one side of the valley, and
the excavation will be carried on in the
open, without caissons. OF course, a
heavy freshet is likely to sweep away the
fiume, fill the trench and 10 great damage,
but the engineers hopefully suggest that
it is not likely that an irreparabie damage
will result from such visitation of Provl-
dence. At any rate, that will be the con-
tractors lookout. When the great trench,
several hundred feet long, as wide as city
block, and so deep that if an ordinary
church was set down in it only the weather
vane would be in sight above the ground,
is finished, all the loose and doubtful rock
will be blasted off and a bed of firm rock
ANY seams or assures will be filled with
solid cement poured in, and two trenches
about ten feet deep and wide will be dug
the whole length across Besides this, the
whole surface will be made rough and I'M
even. Then the actual building of the
dam will be begun by laying irregular
stones, carefully fitted into one another
and bedded in the finest cement mortar In
the two ten-feet trenches. When these
are filled up the stone-laying will be ex-
tended out over the whole bottom of the
big trench, all the stones being of irregular
shape and fitted to one another, and every
chink filled with mortar of the best quail
ity. The object of the two small trenches
and Of the roughened bed of the trench is
to make the bottom of the dam so irregu-
lar that it can never be slid along on the
rock by any possible pressure of water,
and also that it will be impossible for any
water to creep through between the bot
tom of the dam and the rock.