SOME MUNICIPAL WATER PROBLEMS. 
BY L. H. PAMMEL. 
One of the most important subjects engaging the attention of 
cities of various size in this country is a good, wholesome water 
supply, a supply which shall be free from those organisms which 
are responsible for certain diseases that may be classed with the 
preventable. In various parts of this country, efforts are being 
made to supply the smaller cities with a good supply of water, and 
for this reason sewage disposal systems are being installed. The 
public has a right to demand that the water used for domestic pur- 
poses shall be of the best; it should jealously guard, therefore, the 
source of supply. The water supplying our cities comes from the 
following sources: rivers, lakes, mountain rivers, springs, and 
wells. Let us look for a moment at the sources of water supply. 
Taking the streams that occur in Iowa, we find very few but what 
collect a considerable amount of material that is undesirable in 
water. On such a large stream as the Mississippi, there are lo- 
cated the important cities of Keokuk, Burlington, Davenport, Rock 
Island, Muscatine, Clinton, and Dubuque. The water of this stream 
has many chances of pollution, especially so because people are not 
careful with reference to the discharge of waste matter and sewage 
into the streams. For this reason, some of these cities have been 
forced to not only filter their water, but rely on deep wells. Daven- 
port is an illustration where an efficient filter system eliminates 
most of the injurious organisms, and we find from the records made 
by Mr. M. T. Evinger and W. L. Fulton that the average of Missis- 
sippi River water at Burlington contains 48,000 organisms; the 
filtered water contains 640 organisms. At Davenport, the Missis- 
sippi river contains 90,000 organisms, and the filtered water 2,800 
organisms. It will be seen that the Burlington filtration plant elim- 
inates 98.9 per cent organisms, and at Davenport 96.9 per cent 
organisms. We have here an efficient filtration system. It has 
likewise been shown for the city of Albany, New York, where there 
was a particularly high death rate of typhoid fever ; that filtration 
eliminates most of the bacteria. The present water supply of Al- 
bany comes directly from the Hudson River, passes into a small con- 
crete structure, into the pumping station, then into a sedimentation 
basin, thus becoming aerated. The water is thus allowed to purify 
itself, and later passes through filters of gravel of three grades. 
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