Waterbury evening Democrat., 1892-03-07
REPORT OF CITY ENGINEER CAIRNS.
Many Important Matters Treated and
 Accommodations Made.

Many Important Matters Treated and
 Recommend atIons Made.
 The annual report of City Engineer Cairns has just been printed and treats of many important matters. Among other things we find the following:
 The desire on a part of the public for another street between South Main and distance between the former street and Brooklyn, has been constantly agitated during the year, as we'll as for a long time past. At the request of the road board an estimate of the cost of con- structing the Liberty street extension
 was made, providing a clear headway of IS feet over the Naugatuck railroad | tracks for a distance of 180 feet, by | means of an iron bridge of 153 feet span | covering the 130 feet of railroad | property and Great brook on the west | | This 130 feet was all the land owned by | | the railroad company when the street |
 was laid out. Since then they have pur- Benedict estate. Considerable discussion followed, but no orders were given to proceed with construction.
 After years of waiting some progress
 has finally been made on the work of
 putting Bank street and Burnham street
 under the New England railroad tracks
 Burnham street was re-surveyed, an | 0dSI0E kEdOO SSIdDIlSueU TUT lI, anu Dy
 an agreement between the railroad
 company and the city the railroad
 raised their tracks A feet, thus giving
 12 feet head room above the new grade
 of the street. The street has been cut
 through beneath the tracks, and it is
 understood that the masonry walls will
 be built in the spring. The city has
 graded Riverside street from Bank
 street to Burnham street, so that next year this means of communication be-
 tween South Main street and the different parts of Brooklyn ought to be
 in good working order. The board de-
 voted good deal of time and thought to the task of obtaining better and wider street at the Bank street crossing. Several surveys were made and sub- , mitted to the railroad company, and layout was agreed upon which will give , us satisfactory entrance into Brooklyn. While we have some four miles of
 streets which need paving, there is one
 place in particular which needs atten-
 tion for the honor of the city. This is West Main street, from Exchange place
 to the monument. I would strongly } recommend the laying of one of three 3 kinds of pavement here, viz: vitrified brick, asphalt block or sheet asphalt. LAny one of these could be used to make that prominent roadway smooth, hard 2 noiseless and clean.
 4ue sewage Ol llG DI"Dklyn IS designed to discharge into the river be- t low Washington bridge. As a tempo rary expedient the Bank street sewer 3 was permitted to empty beneath the f Bank street bridge. A few branch ) sewers have been built which connect , with the one in Bank street. Until the ' main trunk sewer for this district is : built, running through Riverside street D to Burnham street, under the New Eng land railroad of fhia TOninf on1 fhnnno to the river at Washington bridge, the r flow from the Bank street sewer cannot be removed from it's present point of r discharge, and only few of the many l needed sewers can be built in Brooklyn. l The future development of this part of B our city demands that a beginning should be made on what Is to be it's I main sewer.
 . The matter of sewage disposal has
 been complicated by the recent lay out r and construction by the town of an ex7 ? tension of South Leonard street. This l street passes directly through the only & piece of land which was readily avail : able for a disposal works. Ever since p the works were planned it has been SUD-
 posed that the city would acquire this
 tract for such a purpose. Upon my
 recommendation the board made some r, investigation in regard to the owner U ship of the land, and the feasibility of
 purchasing it for this purpose. Moth ,; ing was accomplished, however, and now it will probably be necessary to e seek a site further down the river. p There are various means which might
 be adopted to purify or otherwise dis ), pose of our sewage, but their discussion e may well be reserved for separate re- l. port at a later date. Some idea of the
 magnitude of the undertaking may be s obtained from the statement recently s made by Charles A. Allen, city engineer
 of Worcester, Mass, that it is costing 1t year to purify six million gallons oi is sewage daily. There appear to be un. S unusually favorable conditions al
 Worcester, making the cost less than in IS some other places. On this basis il is would probably cost us fifteen thousand 3, dollars annually to purify our present ,. sewage, with the certainty that it could never be less. but would probably
 steadily increase. From a standpoint n of selfish interest alone it is certainly
 desirable to postpone this undertaking ,f as long as possible. At the same tim1 '0 it is the part of wisdom to proceed dili "a gently with the gathering of lnforma d tion from every available source, so that "a we may be prepared to adopt thC method which will be at once mos v effective and economical in oul n particular.
 The length of sewers in use on Janu a ary 1, 1899, was twenty-th three and fifteer 7 hundredths miles.
 ;1s AS soon as possible after as IT suming the duties of city engineer ,e made an exact inventory of tn, II maps and other property kept here te This has just been repeated for us,
 during 1899, and contains a careful de
 scription of fourteen hundred anc
 twenty mine maps, tracings, profles anC
 sketches. Besides these there are al ;" the note books, estimate books, lettel
 book, letter files, field instruments, etc