Conservation Commission. 43 



Supplies from wells are utilized by several of the municipalities, 

 but the region is not an artesian basin and all well supplies are 

 merely local surface waters more or less naturally filtered. Their 

 quality is almost universally bad because of both pollution and 

 hardness. In quantity they are entirely inadequate. Their cost 

 is excessive. 



The Niagara river and the Erie canal waters are the only easily 

 available supplies adequate in quantity. The Niagara river sup- 

 plies the larger cities of the region, and the canal is drawn upon 

 more or less frequently in case of shortage by the other munici- 

 palities. The Niagara river waters when filtered under competent 

 supervision can be made reasonably pure and wholesome, but their 

 use in an untreated condition or after treatment under inexpert 

 supervision is pregnant with public peril. Against the use of 

 canal waters there is a public prejudice such that other water can 

 be sold at almost any price in competition with water from the 

 canal whether treated or not. This public prejudice arises from 

 unhygienic conditions existing along the canal, and it is entitled to 

 respect and sympathy. 



In the face of the natural and artificial difficulties set forth 

 above, the resources of any but the very largest municipality are 

 puny and inadequate, and as a result the municipal water supplies 

 of the region are either entirely inadequate or impure, or both. 



These conditions challenged the attention of the Conservation 

 Commission very soon after its appointment and organization, and 

 active studies of the problems were immediately begun under the 

 authority of the Conservation Law. 



Typhoid in the Lake Ontario and Western Division of the State. 



The section of the State covered by this project corresponds 

 roughly with one of the divisions of the State made by the Board 

 of Health and called by them the Lake Ontario and Western Divi- 

 sion. This division has normally a lower death rate than the aver- 

 age for the entire state in the ratio of 11.7 to 16.8, and lower than 

 five of the seven other divisions of the State. As to typhoid fever, 

 however, the showing is the reverse. The district has the unde- 

 sirable record of being the. third in the list of districts arranged 

 according to the average death rate from typhoid for the ten 



