Santa Fe daily New Mexican., 1894-08-09
THE WATER SERVICE.
Some Suggestions of Timely Moment
Respecting Filtration for
Domestic Purposes.

To the Editor of the New Mexican.
Santa Fe, July 3l.-Santa Fe people
are enjoying the great convenience of an
unfalllng supply of water furnished by
enterprising capitalists. And it means
much more to this country than mere
convenience; it means such an addition
to the fertility of the land as must result
in a greatly increased money value of all
farms and ranches that will be irrigated
from the great reservoirs. For irriga-
tion and most other purposes the supply
and quality will no doubt leave nothing
to be desired, and the community bene-
fited by this great boon must not be
averse to paying such fair price for it
as will reimburse their Chicago friends
for their outlay. 1t would not be con-
sistent with business principles, nor with
the sef-respect of our citizens, that such
desideratum should be furnished with
out quid pro quo. That there is still
something lacking in the quality of the
water, however, for drinking purposes
will readily be acknowledged by all who
have had to depend upon the hydrants
for their drinking water during the
storms of the past few weeks. Now there
is nothing in the world to prevent all the
drinking water being delivered to the
city in clear, sparkling, pellucid and
! inviting draft; there are several we'll
known, cheap and effective processes, by
the use of lime and other precipltants, or
preferably by filtering beds, which would
produce the desired result, and surely the
extremely skillful engineers who have di-
rected operations thus far with so much
success, and are at this moment exhibit
ing an ingenuity almost marvellous in the
construction of the new giant dam, will
have no difficulty in devising at an in
finitesimal expense the necessary series
of filtering beds to insure ceaseless sup
ply of delicious drinking water. Prob
ably it would not be necessary to raise
the price to consumers for this purpose,
but if some slight addition were found
abso lutely necessary, on account of the
possible expense of providing gravel and
other material for the beds, our public
spirited citizens would surely not grudge
the small outlay to assure the inestimable
blessing of constant flow of clear,
DrlSnC, pure Wdt6r. ITOUdUly tno Cnl-
cago company might at the same time
see its way to providing few inexpen-
sive drinking fountains in the plaza and
the more frequented localities in the city.
Seeing how deeply interested we all are
in rendering Santa Fe attractive in every
way to our visitors for health or recrea-
tion, it behooves US one and all to be ac-
tive in securing such an absolute neces-
slty for public health and individual
comfort as a constant service of whole
some and refreshing water. The success
of the water enterprise should have far
more widespread result than at first ap.
pears. Cheap generation of electricity
will as surely result in cheap and clean
heat and cookery as the sun shines in the
heavens. Already electric cookery is no
longer an experiment in Europe, although
the expense of generation at present con
fines it mostly to the Kitchens of the
wealthy. But where superfuous electric
energy can be supplied, folks of limited
means are using it for cooking. * *.