Report on the Water Supply of Albany. 225 



Albany. If we were to mention the smaller accessions 

 of impure water we might name the Erie canal and the 

 outlet of Saratoga lake. 



This drainage area which we estimate as containing 

 100,000 people, will probably contain three times that 

 number twenty-five years hence, while the summer supply 

 of water will be less than at present. 



During the frosts of winter and at the time of great 

 freshets, the amount of organic matter and other deleterious 

 substances derived from these sources would be so diluted 

 that it might not prove disastrous to human life, but during 

 the summer season and at low stages of the river, the pro- 

 portion would be so great that we sincerely believe that 

 the use of this water would prove extremely dangerous, if 

 not entirely destructive to the health of the city. In the case 

 of an epidemic like cholera, we believe that the germs or 

 other means of transmitting the disease, would be trans- 

 ported in the water so derived and aid largely in spreading 

 the epidemic. 



Were Albanians to be so far beguiled as supinely to 

 submit to the accomplishment of this scheme, we feel that 

 the results would be disastrous to the health of the city, 

 and were this unhappy idea to be carried out, we may well 

 be charged hereafter with deriving our water from the 

 Cloaca Trojana. 



The proposition to obviate the evils here referred to by 

 excavating a large deep well in one of the sand islands 

 recently formed in the river above the city, from which the 

 water will be pumped, is open to the same objections as 

 taking the water directly from the river. It is said that 

 the water thus obtained will be filtered, but it should be 

 remembered that the most dangerous of its impurities are 

 in solution and cannot be filtered out of the water, and it 

 will require but a short calculation to show that the rate 

 at which water must be supplied to the pump will allow 



Trans, vii.] '29 



