20 



depend upon the elevation of the meadow surface as compared 

 with low water in the tidewater channel. 



If, then, the open period be eight hours and the closed period 

 be sixteen hours of the twenty four — that is a fair average of all 

 our sluice-gates in Hudson County — and in the absence of receiv- 

 ing basins you are depending upon the ordinary system of ditches 

 to drain, sluggishly, the surface and seepage water, within the 

 eight-hour open period, sufficiently to keep your surface free 

 from breeding, I can see only failure or a resort to the suction 

 pump. 



It should be remembered, also, that upon the elevation of your 

 diked area depends the amount of seepage to be cared for. I 

 know of no dike impervious to tidewater, and I am satisfied that, 

 minus the natural receiving basins, we would be operating at 

 least three pumps on the territory above described. 



To illustrate the worth of thesematural reservoirs, or receiv- 

 ing basins, situated at and connected with the sluice-gates, I 

 will give you our latest experience. At the end of last season 

 we connected a very troublesome area with Saw Mill Creek, by a 

 thirty-inch ditch, at a point one and one-quarter miles from the 

 river; from that connecting point our ditches run back one and 

 one-quarter miles to the Arlington Company plant, and, although 

 the gates at the river are open only eight hours in the twenty- 

 four, we get a constant flow of water through the ditches empty- 

 ing into the creek, and when the gates are open that vast amount 

 of water is forced into the river at a terrific speed. 



On the western border of this territory, however, we have dif- 

 ferent conditions. At Frank Creek, near. the Passaic River, we 

 have an area of about one hundred and forty acres lying four 

 inches lower than low tide; here, of course, natural drainage 

 is impossible. The only outlet — Frank Creek — is diked, and, at 

 high tide, when the gates are closed, the water and sewage in 

 the creek rises at times to twenty inches above the surface of 

 the meadow. 



In 1909, Professor Smith made a series of channels on this 

 territory, for the purpose of collecting" surface water, the canals 

 were to be stocked with killies to prevent the maturing of the 



