The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1911-02-05
BIG DITCH IN
new YORK STATE
State Is Spending Fifty Mil
lions on Canal
SOME LARGE PROBLEMS
Second Only to Panama an Engin-
eering Feat-Concrete Arch for
Aqueduct Is Unequnied
in the World
SOME LARGE PROBLEMS

From the New York Herald.
With something like $5O0OO,0OO of the
states money to be spent on the work
of the barge canal in the coming two
years during the administration of Gov
ernor Dix, the public is once more con-
corning itself with what has been and is
being done in digging the big state
ditch which is known as the barge canal.
Twenty million dollars worth of con-
tracts are to be lei this year by the new
state engineer, Mr.. John r. Bensel, and
the Canal Board, and as the work pro-
crosses it calls for an ascending scale of
prices Thirty million dollars at the low
est estimate probably will be paid out
during 1872
This project is second only in import
ance to the building of the Panama canal
from an engineering standpoint. No other
part of the country is engaged in any
such tremendous enterprise for while the
Panama canal Is Federal project the
barge canal was inspired and is being
executed by one state alone, fact which,
whatever opinions one may hold as to the
desirability of a ship instead Of a barge
canal, must in itself excite the interest,
IL not the admiration of the public gen.
orally.
Saving n Million
About three-quarters of the work is
now under contract, amounting alto
gether to $685. 51. The engineers esti-
mates on this work were $69, ,176 so
that the work now under contract has
1<av IAk JA-e tJ,at, t1A n-ff
mates a condition, it is pointed out, that
rarely exists in connection with public
works.
From this point on, since the canaliz-
ing of rivers and digging of prisms
through land lines is nearly completed,
the work will show up to gfeater advant-
age, for it is the concrete structures, the
bridges, locks and dams. that give evil
dence to the public that the work is 60
ing on rather than the dredging OF
marshes and digging of trenches, which
are unsighty and unpieturesque and
therefore, to the unscientific mind I'M
interesting and unimportant.
One of the special features of the barge
canal Is the aqueduct at Medina, where
the water is to be carried over a con-
crete arch of 2S5 feet-the longest single
span concrete in the world.
Other notably long span concrete ar
,hes are the Walnut Lane bridge at Fair
mount Park, Philadelphia, Pa, and the
arch over the Rocky river at Cleveland,
o. The Walnut Lane bridge has clear
span Of 233 feet, and the Rocky river
arch of $50 feet. BY virtue of the length
of the span, the total width, the great
load to be carried and the necessarily
great cost, the Medina aqueduct project
Is considered the most important piece
of concrete arch construction ever under
| taken.
Mammoth Lock
| At Little Falls the canal enters the
Mohawk river by lock of the greatest
simple lift in the world--forty and a half
feet-which Is necessary as the river rises
at times as high as twenty feet above
| low water, though In ordinary years
lffiftten feet is considered the maximum
| height. Unlike any other lock along the
canal, the lower gate here will be of the
lift type Besides this lock will be res
| ervoir to allow a use of a part of the
water for a second lockage.
Within a stretch of mile and a half
the canal reaches the Hudson, little
! north Of the Mohawk, the engineers have
utilized a natural depression which was
not available until modern engineering
| made locks of high lifts possible. Here
are being built flight of five locks with
an aggregate lift of 40 feet-the greatest
| fight of high lift locks in the world In
ioNi>S
| placed along three mile stretch to lock
| down the boats to the river level.
Worlds Record Dredge
| In the famous Montezuma marshes,
which lie along the Clyde, near the juno
ton of the Wayne. Senaca and Cayuga
county lines, where the cattail is the only
important crop, and mosquitoes, 1t is
| said, grow as big as hummng birds,
there has been in use until recently a
dredge which holds the worlds monthly
recorded for excavation for dredges of
its size and type. I'm one month alone
| this big machine, with its twenty-inch
| suction tube. removed the enormous to-
tai of 454,706 cubic yards of material from
the prisms of the canal and deposited 1t
on the adjacent spoil beds.
| AS one of the engineers Is quoted as
saying, "Of course. 1t is the peculiar ma
ture of the material that this namesalSe
of the imperial Aztec has encountered
that Is largely responsible for the vora
cious appetite which 1t has developed"
| Many more instances like these might
be enumerated to bear out the statement
that much of the most important work on
the state ditch not only represents the
very newest problems In the engineering
field, but present them in their most
extensive and complicated form.