CEEATING A SUBTEKRANEAN RIVER AND SUPPLYING 

 A METROPOLIS WITH MOUNTAIN WATER.^ 



By J. Bernard Walker and A. Russell Bond. 



[With 11 plates.] 



I. CREATING A SUBTERRANEAN RIVER 90 MILES IN LENGTH. 



By J. Bernard Walker. 



PHENOMENAL GROWTH OF NEW YORK. 



Greater New York is adding to its population at the rate of 140,000 

 people per year — an increase which is absolutely without precedent 

 or parallel in the growth of the world's great cities. Such an in- 

 crease as this renders enormously difficult the problems of housing, 

 food supply, tran.sportation, and proper hygiene. For many years 

 past, and long before the rate of increase had reached its present 

 proportions, the city authorities have been at their wits' end in en- 

 deavoring to enlarge the various facilities of the city so as to keep 

 pace with the demands of its ever-gi'owing population. 



THE PERIL or WAITER FAMINE. 



With the exception of rapid transit, there is no problem of the 

 city's need which has proved more serious, more pressing or more 

 difficult, at least in recent years, than that of providing an adequate 

 supply of pure drinking water. At frequent intervals the city has 

 been threatened by that justly dreaded terror, a water famine — 

 justly dreaded, because a shortage, to say nothing of a total failure, 

 of water might mean an outbreak of pestilence, to say nothing of 

 the loss and inconvenience occasioned by the shutting down of the 

 various factories and smaller industries which a shortage of the 

 water supply would necessitate. 



It is not so very many months since the whole city was watching, 

 with a very anxious eye, the steady fall of the water levels in the 

 various reservoirs of the Croton watersheds ; for a season of drought, 

 extending far into the winter, had served to bring the hitherto re- 

 mote peril close to its very doors. 



In view of the rapid growth of the city, it was evident at the out- 

 set that any adequate scheme for increasing the water supply must 



1 Reprinted by permission from Scientific American, New York, vol. 108, No. 9, Mar. 1. 

 1913. 



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