The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1891-05-29
A POISONED DISTRICT.
What the City's Sewage Has Done
for the Lowands.
Farms Destroyed, Livestock Poisoned,
and the People Sick and Thor
oughIy Disheartened.

The city sewerage question is becoming
daily Of increasing interest, and the mat
ter of its solution must very soon be
grappled with by the authorities.
Just now the city has no actual outlet
for her drainage. It is run into little
ditch, which has very little carrying ca
pacity, and its outlet is Sutterville Slough,
which empties into the Pocket" the
basin lying between Oak Hall and Free
port. The result is that both the Pocket
and the slough are chock-full, and the
sewage backs up close to the city.
So much complaint has of late been
made by the landowners and residents
south of the city, because of the injury
that is being inflicted upon them by the
city's drainage, that at its last meeting the
City Board of Trustees accepted an invi-
tatlon from Colonel James McNasser, the
largest landowner in the district af-
fected, to visit that locality and inspect
the canal at various points.
Yesterday afternoon was the time fixed
upon for the trip, and at half-past l o'clock
the party left the city for the purpose
mentioned. 1t consisted of Mayor Com
stock, Trustee Conklin, Colonel Nc
Nasser, ex-City Surveyor Bassett, Major
III. Weinstock, ex-City Trustee John
H,yan and A. Nelson, DIR. Parkinson,
Daniel Flint, David Falconer, a. NJ.
Smith and representatives of the RECORD
UNION and Bee. While
COLUMNS MIGHT BE WRITTEN
Descriptive of the situation, as it was
found by the party, the facts can be briefly
stated.
Where the drainage canal crosses the
Riverside road, just below the city, o
slight current was perceptible, but at
Sutterville there was apparently no flow
whatever. Below there the sewage has
filled up all the basins and encroached
upon the agricultural lands, until vege-
table gardens have been inundated. The
stencil arising from the apparently stag
nant marsh at Sutterville is simply awful,
and 1t is no wonder that there is some
body sick in every family about there.
DESERTED FIELDS.
The party were driven over portion
of Colonel McNasSer's farm Just below
Oak Hall, and their attention was called
by the Colonel to the great damage he
had suffered from the OVERLOOKING of the
Pocket by the city's drainage.
The water was up within few hundred
yards of the road, and covered, he said,
5000 acres of as fertile soil as there is
under the sun. Where the water now
on his land would float the steamer Mo-
doc he said he three years ago raised 100
tons of hay.
Away out in an ocean of tule, mile
from the waters edge, the top of a tank
was just visible. Where that tank stands
Colonel McNasser said he had to dig ten
feet few years ago to get water sup
ply for his stock. Then nearly the en-
tire land embraced in the Pocket was
under cultivation-now it is a wild waste
OF
FoUL-SMELLING WATER
And overgrown with tule twelve feet
high. OF all his thousands of acres, the
Colonel has but a narrow strip out of
water. All efforts to cultivate even this
portion had to be abandoned, and even
the alfalfa had been drowned out. He
had no place for his livestock, beyond a
few head, and was obliged to pasture the
rest elsewhere at heavy expense.
Instead of having twenty-five men
at work here cutting hay and cultivating
other crops" said the Colonel, II have
just one man on the place, and all he has
to do is to look after things"
SICK AND DIsHEARTENED.
From Colonel McNasser's first ranch
the party drove around the pocket. -
and on the way interviewed the people
living along the road. All had the same
sad story TO tell-their families down
61Ch, GlGlI ldIiuS Submerged DN the IOlll
sewage-waters from the city, no crops,
and their swine and poultry dying off
from drinking the poison-ladened water.
This was the story that old residents
such as Messrs. Baumgartel, Ferio, Cos
ling and others had to relate. MIR. Cos
ling, who made his home on the high
ground at the southern end of the
pocket" nearly forty years ago, said,
with sigh, that all his labor had gone
for naught. His lands are all submerged,
except the little narrow ridge on which
his home stands; there is only wild
tule waste where he used TO have hun
dreds of acres of grain and hay; his own
health was broken down from long sick
ness, and his wife had been a bed-ridden
sufferer from malarious poisons for two
years. He said he was completely dis
heartened, and there was nothing for him
to do but take his family away and aban-
don their old home.
THE ALLEGED canal"
From Mr.. Gosling's tule and seware.
Swamped farm the party drove to the
canal where it crosses the road leading
out to the Freeport aoad. There they
found it in a horrible condition. There
was but four feet of water in it, and abso-
lutely no current whatever. The canal
Tor ditch is thickly grown up with tule
and flag, and is filled with all sorts OF
debris. The banks are broken in various
places, and its foul waters have flowed
through upon the lands of the PEOPLE who
had made their homes in that fertile and
productive locality, spreading poison, dis
ease and death over the entire ''Pocket''
section.
DEATH ON HOGS AND POULTRY.
AT the old Shaler place, where tbere ;e
now but small mound out of water. the
writer saw, fifteen years ago, grain and
corn fields, yielding good crops. Now,
the only occupant of the place is a sickly.
looking man who is trying to make a liv.
ing by raising poultry and swine.
While the party stopped there about five
minutes, he went out 100 yards from his
cabin and gathered up an armful of dead
young turkeys which he had thrown
away within the last couple of DAYS. Ont
of 100 turkeys, he said he had but about
twenty left-alI killed by drinking the
foul water that surrounded the place
There had been almost as great mortality
among his hogs, twenty having lately
died from the same cause. In short,
THERE Is A BLIGHT UPON THE WHOLE
DISTRICT
Lying between the high land along tn,
Freeport road and the river. And thu
people all say it has been caused bv tn,
city running its sewage and drainag,
waters down upon them.
Apparently the charge is well founded
Whatever the drainage canal may hay,
once been capable of, il is practically use
less IN its present condition, and conse
quently there is no place for the city,:
sewage to go but upon the lands III tn,
Pocket.
STAGNANT SEWAGE.
There is now dead water from tn,
lower end of the Pocket up TO Suttervill,
Indeed, to within a mile of the city,:
Hmits-an ocean of stagnant, poisonous
1oul-smelllng and disease-breeding STUFF
that scarcely deserves the name O
water" 1t pollutes both the soil anC