Arizona republican., 1896-03-10
A C[TY'S WATER SERVICE How Phoenix Gets Her
 Supply. All Drawn From a Single
 Well.
An Underground Flow That No Available Pump Can
 Exhaust.


 about Phoenix is the source whence comes the water supply of the city. Though situated on the very edge of the city, its location plainly marked by the 1O0-foot iron standpipe, it seems little visited. Whatever be the char acter of the service, the water is gen. eraly remarked as pure and whole some and in quantity has never been known to lack. Yet it is from a we'll
 The we'll is the main feature of in terest about the works. The visitor climbs down into a pit wherein are placed two great pumps, each of which is capable of delivering thousand gallons of water a minute to the top of the standpipe. Thence through a Lit tie door set in the masonry, an electric light switch is snapped and the foun- tain head is visible. The well is about fifteen feet in diameter, it and the sub terranean we'll chamber solidly walled in rock and cement Below but a short distance in the level of the water the fluid clear and beautiful under the electric ray.
 There's eighteen feet of it. said Night Engineer Peek, land the pumps don't affect the level a bit. It's really astonishing the quantity there is, to draw from. When the company pur- chased the works from the Gardiner system we started to deepen the we'll We sunk wood and iron shoe on which I.he stone was set, down dis tance of ten feet more than the pre- vious depth and there we had to stop. We had a No 8 centrifugal pump, speeded ito discharge 2,2OO gallons a minute (nearly 250 miners inches) and it couldn't clear the water from the pit. Several times the pump stopped while three of us were at work at the bottom. We would make a wild rush for the ladder and do you know the last man always got wet up to the neck. The water spurted out of the sides in streams as thick as your leg.
 we always keep the standpipe within ten feet of the top," continued Peek in answer to a query, land one pump usually is sufficient to hold the level against any consumption of the town. The only exception is when Uul6I0 dIO uTOS. 1NG OCu6I s6fSuIuS | had pumped up the standpipe to with in six inches of full and had gone out of the boiler room ito take a look at the storm It was the widest sort of a night. I heard a fire alarm and saw a sudden blaze. I argued it was tough night for a fire, so ran back into the engine room and started the pumps full speed. I kept the tank exactly full and the high wind would scoop whole barrels of water out of it and dash it over on the engine house tiM you would have thought the iron roof would have given away. It was that dangerous First avenue fire and you can bet the firemen had all the water they needed"
 The works are full of curious feat ures, many of them due to the inge- nuity of the chief engineer, Captain Andrews. There are four boilers, one of them of the largest horizontal type and another an odd, though effective, tubular or Porcupine boiler, looking more like smokestack than anything else. All the water used is condensed by means of 1,500 feet of pipe laid in the bottom of a trough fed constantly with cold water from the Sat River Valley canal near by. There are dyna- mos and fans and water motors, and altogether it is a very paradise for the individual with a mechanical bent of mind