The San Francisco call., 1906-09-19
COLONEL HEUER IS.
|NvEST|GAT INC.
Contractor Gets Rid Of
Worthless Junk by Con-
signing It to the Bay
WORK DONE IN NIGHT

While San Francisco was asleep on
Monday night a barge laden with
twisted metal debris left Mission-street
wharf No. and was towed hun
dred feet or so beyond the pier line,
where eighteen men dumped the tan
gled refuse overheard. 1t lies there
now collecting mud and sand and form
ing the base of shoal which some
day may cause trouble to floating prop
erty An anchor dropped there now
either would be held in the grip of
that metal network or would come up
SO festooned that 1t might take hours
Of work to clear 1t.
This method of disposing of debris
Is easy and cheap, but involves seri-
Gus infringement of the law. and
Colonel William H Heuer. chief Of the
army engineers at this port is going
to see about 1t. The army engineers
are responsible for the unobstructed
maintenance of marine conditions with
in the Golden Gate. They have granted
permission to one contractor to dump
debris in the depths near Mile Rock,
but nothing like Monday nights per-
formance will be tolerated
MEN REVEAL SECRET.
How long this has been going. on Is
not yet known, and 1t might have been
repeated with immunity but for mis-
understanding between the contractor
and the eighteen men who threw the
stuff over board. These eighteen men
gathered on the bulkhead between Mis-
sion-Street wharves l and 2 yesterday
forenoon making anxious Inquiries for
Mike Sullivan. They appealed to
Wharfinger William Harrington
C,x11 l.
tractor who was clearing away debris
on large scale. They had been hired
by him to unload this barge during
the hours of dark and had been prom
ised their pay yesterday morning. They
told Harrington all about 1t.
THEIR INSTRUCTIONS.
They had been Instructed, they said,
to take the barge just far enough from
the end of the wharf to avoid attract
Ing the attention of any curious soul
that might be abroad. The stuff they
threw overheard, they explained, was
all metal. Under ordinary circum-
stances 1T might be valuable as junk,
but there was so much of 1t in San
Francisco just now and such little
facility for storing 1t until it could be
disposed OF, that there was more money
in throwing 1t away than in keeping
1t. and the less expense attached to get
ting rid of 1t the greater profit for the
contractor. The waters Of the bay
would hide it and if it was discovered
later nobody would know who had put
1t there.
And nobody would II Sullivan had
met his men yesterday morning. Har-
rington told them they had violated
the law, and one of the men declared
his intention of informing the authori-
ties and assisting them in Furnishing
the man responsible.
The matter was called to the atten-
tion of the United States engineers yes
terday and In the afternoon a Govern
ment official called on Harrington and
secured all the information the wharf
niger could give him. Colonel Heuer
will place the matter in the hands of
United States District Attorney Devlin
and whoever IS responsible for Mon
days midnight excursion will be COM
PEELED to make explanations to Uncle
Sam and take the consequences of hav-
ing broken one of the most zealously
enforced of federal laws