The sandy substratum makes the entire valley a vast filtering basin — a 

 great lake filled with sand and gravel, whence issues the pure and limpid 

 water of the Kankakee river. 



This is a satisfactory answer to the first and most important question con- 

 cerning a city water supply. 



The second question is the adequacy of supply. 



The most convenient point on the Kankakee for starting a pipe line to Chi- 

 cago or any of the new cities in the northwestern part of Indiana is in 

 township 33 north, range ('•> west, not far from the boundary line between 

 Porter 'and Lake counties. 



The drainage area of the basin above this point is about twelve hundred 

 square miles, which is four times the area of the Croton basin whence is 

 derived the water supply of New York. 



The sluggish flow of the river, due to the fall of only four inches to the 

 mile, substantially makes this basin of over a thousand square miles a re- 

 servoir more than sufficient for the greatest demands, and satisfactorily an- 

 swers the second general question concerning a city supply. 



In answer to the third and fourth general questions, the state survey of 

 1882 shows that the eleva'ion of the initial point already designated as the 

 proper beginning place for a pipe line is seventy-three (73) feet above lake 

 Michigan, or sixty-nine feet above the Illinois Central depot on the lake 

 front of Chicago, or fifty- one feet above the railway station at Toleston. 



The distance from the initial point to Chicago is less than fifty miles and 

 to Toleston twenty-five miles. 



The sand ridge on the north side of the Kankakee has a probable altitude 

 of fifty feet, and in the absence of a survey it cannot be stated whether it 

 would be better to excavate through this ridge for the pipe line or to pump 

 the water to the summit. If it is found feasible to excavate for the line a 

 a flow of water by gravity alone can be secured from the Kankakee to the 

 lake front in Chicago, with a fall of one foot per mile, into the receiving 

 reservoir twenty-three feet above the level of the street. The first Croton 

 aqueduct has a fall of forty-seven feet in thirty-eight miles. 



If it is found more expedient to pump the water to the summit it is pos- 

 sible that an open channel along the surface of the ridge could be con- 

 structed so as to" reduce the closed pipe line to twenty- five miles and to de- 

 liver the water in Chicago with a standpipe pressure of from fifty to seventy- 

 five feet. 



