HALIFAX WATER W(3RK.S. — JOHNSTON. 83 



The commissioners, after considering the various reports 

 upon the proposed increase in supply, had no hesitation in 

 recommending that Spruce Hill Lake be raised 10 feet, and 

 the water conducted into the city by a line of pipes. 



In 1866 the whole scheme was submitted to Air. Thomas 

 C. Keefer, and on September 25th of that year he submitted 

 his report. He recommended taking the supply from Spruce 

 Hill Lake by gravity, and estimated that these lakes would 

 ordinarily furnish a supply of 2,000,000 gallons, and in a dry 

 year not less than 1,000,000 gallons per diem, or suilicient for a 

 liberal supply for 20,000 persons, or about double the number 

 assigned to the high level district. A 15-inch pipe to within 

 a mile and a quarter of the lake and a 20-inch pipe co'nnected 

 through the intervening distance to thb lake would deliver 

 2,000,000 gallons per day at the higher levels and 3,000,000 

 per day at a level of 100 feet above tide. He also suggested 

 that in future an intermediate system might be obtained by 

 catching a portion of the Lo^ig Lake water at an elevation of 50 

 feet above the lake and forming a reservoir and runnins,- a line 

 of pipes to town. In January, 1867, the city council adopted 

 this report. Work was commenced on the l7th April, 1868, 

 on the dam and pipe line, and the work was finished in the 

 following year. 



By an act of legislature, passed 18th April, 1872, the 

 powers and functions hitherto exercised by the commissioners 

 of water supply were to cease on the 30th September of the 

 same year, and a committee of the city council called the board 

 of works was vested with all the said powders and functions. The 

 following quotation is taken from the first report of Mr. E. II. 

 Keating, the first city engineer of Halifax, in 1873. Adverting 

 to the formation of the commission in 1861, he said: ''The 

 new commission seemed to work well, and great praise is due 

 to the gentlemen who comprised the board for the energetic 

 manner in which they grappled with the difficulties with "wbich 

 they had to contend, and for the mainner in which the work 



