The Lake County times. [volume] (Hammond, Ind.) 1906-1933, 1910-01-10
COMPELLED
TO BATTLE
ELEMENTS
East Chicago City Water De-
partment Compelled to
Wage Heroic Warfare in
Order to Supply the City
With Water.
(Special to TIE TIMES !


East Chicago, Jan. 1O.-In the Joke
column OF the EDITORIAL page of YES
terday's Tribune appeared a little
squib. in which one suburbanite was
supposed to have spent two hours at
tempting to thraw out his water pipes,
and finally, is supposed to have met
with complete success. the water flow
ing freely He got on a car to go to
MS business and meeting a neighbor
was Informed that the water had been
turned off for two hours that morning
Something of the kind might have hap
pened to almost any subscriber of the
water company during the recent cold
snap without any very long stretch of
the imagination.
But while the householder Is kick
ing what do you think the water COM
pany is doing?
superintendent C. L. Kirk of the wa
ter company has put in a good part
Of the holiday season floating around
the crib and kicking the ice away from
the intake so that his patrons might
have a little something to take as
chaser besides ginger ale or snit of
beer That the water is doing every
thing in their power to keep the city
supplied with water is exemplified in
the fact that they are paying at the
rate of 1885 a day for tugs and divers
without taking into account Mr.. Kirk
or his employees time, which is put in
In the same laudable purposes of keep
ing the city well supplied with water.
Description of Crib.
The submerged crib which supplies
East Chicago and Indiana Harbor is
about 5000 feet from shore and is
twenty feet square by seven inches
high. It IS composed of nine pockets.
are build oter. ons waI1s OF ass -,.cris
between these and the inside pocket is
filled with stone through which the wa
ter seeps to get to the intake pipe. At
the point where the crib is located the
water is approximately twenty-five
feet deep which makes the top of the
crib about fifteen feet below the sur
face of the bottom of the lake and
eventually breaks loose coming to the
surface and again sinking. This ice
shush forms about the walls of the
crib and prevents the water from get
ting to the intake pipe. To keep as
much as possible of this kind of ice
away from the crib tugs are employed
to keep it scattered on the surface and
divers are used to scrape it away from
Makes Gallant Fight.
That Superintendent Kirk has made
the elements is shown by the fact that
the city water supply has been cut
off but once during the past month Of
a gallant and successful fight against
zero weather, and that for only a
short time. The pumping station. To-
Gated In Lake Front Park, which sup
/,
from we'll thirty feet deep and TWEEN
ty-four feet in diameter, located near
the shore of the lake and this well is
supplied by thirty six-inch pipe from
the crib. About one hundred feet out
in the lake on this pipe is a T. which
extends straight up from the main
pipe about four and one-half feet. is
there for emergency use and has cap
on the top of 1t. Superintendent Kirk
at first thought he would remove the
cap and permit the water to run right
in thorugh this channel, but after con-
sidering the proposition he was afraid
the slush ice might get In and form
between the T and the crib thereby
cutting off the supply from that source.
The question of why doesn't the
ter company move their crib farther
out in the lake has been often raised
in East Chicago and Indiana Harbor.
but the answer is apparent when 1t is
taken into consideration that the wa
ter, two, three or even four miles out
Is only fourteen to fifteen feet deep.
The Twin Cities are congratulating
themselves on the small amount of
trouble they have had with their wa
ter supply this winter. compared with
their neighbor towns.