Waterbury Democrat., 1901-03-22
WASTE OF WATER.
Leaky Mains May Be Found to Be at
 the Bottom of It.

Leaky Mains May Be Found to Be at the Bottom of It.
 | Thomas Kelly is out against the is
 suing of bonds for the placing of water meters in places where city water is
 used. He alleges that it is likely that | if the water department would turn l it's attention to 1eaky mains there
 might be no need of going to the ex- pense of installing meters, and wishes 1 to put an article on the water question
 which he clipped from some metropol-
 itan Journal before the people of Wa
 terbury in the hope that they may de- | rive some information from it. Here l it is:
 The late Colonel Waring popularizeo
 the results of MT Deacon's work in
 Liverpool by summarizing them ill an
 article he published in Harper's Week l ly a year or two before his untimely
 death. Mir Deacon did not believe l that people used, or wasted in their houses, anything like the amount of water that ran into the mains. And in spite of the amount of water that was delivered in the mains the supply | was so scanty that water was shut off from parts of the city at certain hours l and rigid economy enforced He instituted system of spying on the mains; not on the inhabitants. He | connected meters with the mains, ,diyid- | ing the service system into districts.
 He presently found large amounts Of water running through the mains in districts where consumption was small; he suspected leaks. hunted for them, found them. closed them. and | found the "consumption'' of water greatly reduced. This work was con- tinued till it was found possible to | furnish Liverpool with an abundant supply of water for public and private
 purposes and deliver only about 21
 United States gallons per head of pop ulatiOn. In the same article in which Colonel Narlng described the work of Mir Dea
 con he warned the public that the en- glneers could always be depended on to deny that there was any importanl waste in the waterworks in their charge. But he suggested q ready test
 It was to ascertain by observation the hour when there was the least draught
 or water into the mains, multiply this by tWenty-four and compare the result with the actual delivery of water Der diem. Colonel Waring wrote before the Ramapo controversy. After that
 the suggestion was made that it is i'm possible for the people of New York
 to use 115 gallons of water per capita
 per day. and that there must be q tre- mendOus street waste. At once the engineers in charge of the waterwOrkS verified Colonel Warnings prediction by saving that the mains might be very leaky in some cities, but it was not so here; there could not be much waste in New York. But Comptroller Coler engaged MT Freeman. an engineer of Connecticut. to report to him on our
 water supply. and Mir Freeman applied f'n10np1 ri,
 covered" he said in his report thar in the most quiet hour of the night at $ a. m.. ninety gallons per capita were
 being drawn from the pipes while the average draught for the whole twenty
 four hours was less than 12O. These experiments make it certain that abo,1t two-thirds of the present supply is wasted Wasted for the most part outside of houses, for water takers are not drawing water at 8 a. m. -. -,~
 MT Croes, president of the American society of Civil Engineers. has lately computed the waste a little lower about 61 per cent, say 12 per,c cent on, premises and nearly 50 per cent in streets. The work of Mr Deacon. re
 peated in English and American cities. proves that very much the greater part or this street waste can be saved. Tn an article contributed to the Times some time ago, he said: Every year over 1,OOo leaks in pipe joints. and as many more ill service pipes, become so bad that they show at the surface of the ground and have to be repaired.
 put until they get as bad as that they go on dribbling away water into tnp ground and the sewers without detec- ton. Every year about two miles of old pipes have to be taken LID and Pc. neWed.' And yet we have not in.
 Deacon system of detecting water leaks.
 About one-third of all the water tr,o
 Manhattan purports to use is not :usen
 and is not wasted by individuals and
 is not wasted because there is no ran. : edy. Just about one-thiri. not less of
 the alleged water consumption in Man hattan is preventable street waste. and as We have remarked before if IS the duty of our water authorities tn
 stop this waste and then store the
 water that can now be had on the Croton watershed; not till the city has outsroWn these measures should it fan
 the Catskills or tic Adirondacks. ; !