The San Francisco call., 1897-02-02
SCHUSSLER BACK
FROM EUROPE.
Strange Discoveries in the
Water of the Famous
River Elbe.
The Kind of Drink With Which
Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen
Are Supplied.
Same thing About Bacteria, the Su.
perb Plumbing of Ancient Rome
and California Water.

Herman Schussler, engineer of the
Spring Valley Water Company, has re-
turned here after four and q half months
absence in different parts of the East and
Europe. He went partly for rest, after
three years OF uninterrupted hard work,
and to see ali the newest improvements in
hydraulic engineering, and particularly to
look into the water supplies of different
cities.
Mr.. Schussler visited Germany, Den
mark, Norway. Sweden and Italy, and had
an extremely pleasant trip. In 1868 and
1864 Mr.. Schussler was q student at the
Polytechnic School at Carlsruhe, in Baden.
When he visited Baden this time he met
several of his old schoolmates and two of
his former professors. At the request OF
the faculty he delivered lecture on the
progress OF American engineering, the
supplies of water here and irrigation. He
also delivered two lectures at Bremen and
Hamburg on similar subjects.
The Investigations which he made while
abroad are of considerably more than Or
dinary interest. He examined into the
systems OF the leading cities in order that
any improvements they had might be
adopted here.
Among the most prominent water
WORKS of Germany l thoroughly investl-
gated those of Berlin, Hamburg and
Bremen" said Mr.. Schussler. II found
the new water works of Ham burg, con-
structed since the cholera of 1898, with its
enormous filters, basins and pump stations
TO be one OF the finest anywhere. Ham
burg gets its water from the Elbe, which
drains an enormous country, comprising
the central part of Prussia and the
whole of the kingdoms of Saxony and
Bohemia.
There are also many large cities on the
Elbe above Hamburg, the largest ones
being Magdeburg, Dresden and Prague.
Bohemia forms the headwaters of the
Elbe. and these three large cities and
mum Der of smaller cities and villages dis
charge their sewage into the Elbe, and the
waste and offal from thousands of manu-
factories and from all the vast area OF
farming land go down this river. 1t
should be remembered that this vast
region is inhabited by teeming millions of
people.
Bremen is similarly situated to Ham
burg, except that the watershed of the
river Weser, from which it gets it's water
supply, is smaller. but is almost as densely
populated as the watershed OF the Elbe.
Berlin draws its water from the Havel,
Spreeand some OF the lakes through which
these rivers run. On their course they
also drain densely populated country,
in addition to extensive peat swamps.
"In all the three cases-Berlin, Ham
burg and Bremen-the water is first lifted
with low-lift pumps out of the res pective
rivers into settling basins, in which it de-
posts a certain per cent of it's filth. From
there 1t runs by gravitatlon into the sand
filter beds, when 1t passes through layers
of sand varying from four to five feet in
thickness, and thus filtered 1t runs into
the pump-wells, from which the high
it
standpipes, from which it flows into the
respective city pipe systems.
by the above sy stem Of sand-filtering
the water works are trying to reduce the
numb Der of bacteria, which in the river
Weser, for instance, near Bremen, had
been known at times to exceed 200 600, 600
to the American gallon, down TO the Gov
ernment standard of 37S, 900 bacteria to the
American gallon. Frequently one filter
ing is not sufficient to do this, and so a
double tiltering has to be resorted to.
"Thus the water is mechanically
cleansed of most or its living and dead i'm
purities, but no attempt whatever is made
to cleanse it of any of the chemical i'm
purities that have been discharged into
the rivers on the watershed above, and
the chemical analysis is practically
dropped out OF their investigations.
"As regards the pumping plants in those
cities / found very fine machinery, but
from the point OF tne coal economy the
engineers in our works here are consider
ably ahead of those in European cities.
when in the lectures l gave l de-
scribed the water works here and showed
that they owned or controlled the largest
proportion of their watershed, the best
experts there pronounced it very unique
and unusually favorab BILE case of water sup
ply to a large city, as it gave an oppor-
tunity to control the purity of the water,
| while they, with their large cities, had to
take such water from their respective
rivers as flowed down to them from the
above described densely populated coun-
| tries.
"I had an interesting trip through Dem
mark and parts of Sweden and Norway,
and returned throu2h b Germany by way
| OF Rome and Naples. In Rome 1 had an