98 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE PEOGEESS OF SCIENCE 



THE CAT SKILL AQUEDUCT 



The supply of water for New York 

 City is an engineering and economic 

 problem of the greatest possible im- 

 portance. The supply from the Croton 

 watershed is at present just about 

 equal to the consumption; if the rain- 

 fall during the present year should be 

 small, there is danger lest there be an 

 actual water famine in New York City, 

 the harmful results of which would be 

 almost incalculable. The consumption 

 could be considerably lessened by re- 

 quiring meters in each house measuring 

 the amount of water used, and it would 

 doubtless be desirable to introduce this 

 system, though it would not give per- 

 manent relief. The average daily con- 

 sumption of Croton water in New York 

 City is over 350,000,000 gallons and 

 the increasing population causes an 

 annual increase of fifteen million gal- 

 lons a day. Unless an interstate agree- 

 ment could have been made by which 

 water should have been obtained from 



Connecticut, the Catskill region is the 

 only source that will give an adequate 

 supply for a long period of years. The 

 engineering problems of bringing the 

 water a hundred miles from the Cat- 

 skill Mountains are of great magni- 

 tude; the construction of the aqueduct 

 is nearly equal to that of the Panama 

 canal in difficulty and in cost. 



The geology of the region and to a 

 large extent the engineering problems 

 are reviewed in a bulletin issued by 

 the New York Education Department 

 and prepared by Professor Charles P. 

 Berkey, of Columbia University. The 

 facts and illustrations for this note are 

 taken from this report. The surface 

 of the Ashokan reservoir in the Cat- 

 skills will be 590 feet above the sea, 

 and the High View reservoir within 

 the limits of New York City will have 

 an elevation of 295 feet. The length 

 of the aqueduct between the two reser- 

 voirs will be approximately 92 miles 

 and the main distributing conduit in 



-J* 



A View of the Catskill Mountains, looking across the Beaverkill basin which is 



to form a part of Ashokan Reservoir. 



