Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-10-06

thirty-three feet at Nth and F. The total
length of the two sections will be TO- 35
feet. The Easily Point section is COCO feet
long and contains $50 bricks to the foot
1t is estimated that the Easily Point and
street sewers combined will take the
storm water and sewage from thickly
populated area Of 531 acres. The Easily
section alone is proportioned to take a
rainfall of one and one-fourth inches per
hour upon its whole drainage area. When
the two sections are finished they will in
tercept all old sewers crossing toward the
river between It'll street and Easily Point,
including the 18th and 18th street sewers,
thus doing away with many thousand feet
of old sewers.
pared IN size to the famous sewers Of Lon
don and Paris. but there are few sewers in
American cities that are of equal or great
er size. One would suppose the sew
ers Of New York to be large, but they
are not. New York has no need Of large
sewers and they are much smaller than the
Easily Point sewer. The city Is so situated
that the sewage can be conducted by the use
of large pipes to the river on either side
and 1t Immediately passes off in the swift
currents. Philadelphia has some of the
largest sewers in this country, but only a
few Of them are much larger than our
new sewer Baltimore has, practically no
sewers.
Walking Through the Sewer.
The finishing touches have been put upon
the Easily sewer from the river to the bend
at 22d and d streets, a distance of over a
mile. The upper end Is barricaded on ac-
count of falling rock, which threatened to
injure the new work, but as no connection
with other sewers has yet been made there
is consequently no water In 1t, and 1t can
be entered from the river. With the as
sistaEce of a lantern one can walk the
whole distance as comfortably as upon the
street. Toward the middle there may be a
desire on the part of the visitor to crawl
up a manhole and get bit Of fresh air.
but otherwise it is not a disagreeable place
to take a stroll. There Is not yet any of the
Characteristic odor and dirt of sewer, and
1t appears in walking through more like an
underground railroad tunnel. Eleven feet
in diameter seems to be small, but a six
horse tafly-hO coach could be driven
through 1t with passengers on top, and a
boat which would hold fifty persons could
navigate in It, II going toward the river a
boat would need no motive power other
than the current, which will run at the
rate of four miles an hour when the sewer
is half full Of water. Viewing it from the
exterior one has little idea of it's size. 1t is
necessary to go inside In order to appreciate
this.
The Proposed System.
While this section, in itself, is a large af-
feir. 1t Is only the beginning Of the very ex-
tensive system of sewerage proposed by the
board of three special sanitary engineers ap-
pointed August II, 1889, by ex-PresIdant
system of sewerage existing in the District
OF Columbia, and authorized to suggest the
best means Of improving the same The
engineers appointed to do this work were
Rudolph Herring of New York, Frederick p
Stearns of Massachusetts,, and Samuel NJ
Grey of Rhode Island. A very extensive re-
port upon the subject was prepared by them
and submitted to Congress in June 1890
rms report has been previously detailed in
Inc Star. Congress approved the project
recommended by this board and the Easily
Point sewer is the result of the first appro-
priation made for this work This board was
appointed only two months after the flood
or June, 1889, and their principal object was
TO determine upon system of sewerage
which would combine the two advantages
OF carrying off both the storm water and
the natural drainage in ordinary dry wealth.
er. While 1t was found necessary to guard
agairWt the flooding of the low districts a
danger to be removed lay in the fact that
the present outlets are too fiat, and instead
of discharSing the water into the channels,
as they were intended to do, the sewers re-
maiLed constantly filled with foul deposit
and overflowed at the slightest increase Of
diScharSing matter. In this city, more than
other cities, the sewers are rapidly filled by
the smallest storm. because the asphaltum
paving has no power of absorption. The
drainage is so large from a storm of only
tire, inches rainfall per hour that 1t taxes
the present sewers to their limit. The pro-
Ject recommended by the three sanitary en-
S!neerS Is calculated to answer every re-
quirement for the next forty years. but they
specially recommend that the entire system