The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1908-07-31


a worldwide notoriety; sewers in
which the criminal classes could hide
and escape detection, and big enough
70 permit fa1r-sized boats sailing
through them. But now one American
city at least has, or rather has in the
course of construction, a sewer which
far exceeds in size anything which
Paris possesses, or any other city of
the world, for that matter. 1t is big
enough to permit big tug to steam
through it's bricked and cemented
walls. 1t is known as the Harlem
Creek sewer and will be 20 feet in
diameter in its largest section and
from 81 feet to Is feet in the smaller
sections, the main section and the two
branches measuring over four miles
in extent and the whole draining more
than 5000 acres of land. There are
longer sewers than this, and there are
drainage systems, not sewers, which
drain much larger tracts of land, but
there is no sewer in the world that
combines such great size with extent
of area drained, and there is no city
drainage system in the world that in
ary way compares with it.
To the average person a 20-foot
sewer means nothing at all, because
the usual man or woman knows little
about sewers; but to engineers and
contractors it means something stu
pendous in sewer construction. Six
teen feet has heretofore been the ex-
IRENE size for city sewers, and most
sewers are from 10 to IL feet in
diameter, with branch lines very much
smaller, in some cases only foot or
Is inches in diameter. When these
figures are considered and compared
with the dimensions of the Harlem
Creek sewer, even the uninitiated can
not fail to see what an enormous work
the city of ST. Louis has in hand in
its new sewer. The Harlem Creek
sewer is nearly twice as large in it's
internal diameter as any other sewer
yet built. From it's lowest point to
the top of the arch it is more than
twice the height of high-ceilinged
room and almost three times the
height of the ordinary modern ceilings.
From the surface of the water when
the sewer runs at ordinary capacity
to the top of the arch is 10 feet 3
inches, or half again the height of the
ordinary room. Gasoline launches
could sail up this sewer without diff
Guilty at any stage of water, and when
the flow is low tugboat would have
no trouble in steaming from one end
of the large section to the other. If
the bottom of the sewer were level,
loaded van could drive through it and
still have room to spare at the top.
The Harlem Creek sewer was be-
gun July 10, 1906, and Sewer Commits
sioner Fardwell expects to have the
public section, or that section running
from Florissant avenue to the river,
completed within another year. The
entire system will probably not be
finished for three or four years more,
and all the connecting lines will not
be laid till the section drained be-
comes more thickly populated.
The popular idea of large sewers
has been gained from the lurid pic
lures which Victor Hugo and Eugene
Sue have drawn of the sewers of Paris,
and from what the many less illus
trious writer's have said of the sewers
of London and other European cities.
London has the most complicated
ard longest sewer system owing to its
great extent and enormous popula-
ton, but there is no city in Europe,
as there are none of any size in Amer
lea except ST. Louis which does not
have to treat the sewage before dis
posing of it.
The elaborate pumping stations
which the sewer departments of New
York and Chicago are obliged to main
tain for sanitary reasons cost those
cities thousands of dollars every year,
while the treating plants in European
sewer systems are the most important
and expensive parts of the systems.
st. Louis has none of this to contend
with, having unexcelled natural drain