MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE - WATER WORKS HISTORY ---------------------------------- Information located at http://www.nh.searchroots.com On a web site about GENEALOGY AND HISTORY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE and its counties TRANSCRIBED BY JANICE BROWN Please see the web site for my email contact. ---------------------------------- The original source of this information is in the public domain, however use of this text file, other than for personal use, is restricted without written permission from the transcriber (who has edited, compiled and added new copyrighted text to same). ======================================================== SOURCE: History of Hillsborough County, New Hampshire Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis & Co., 1885 ******* THE WATER-WORKS page 111 ******* So rapid was the early growth of Manchester that a pressing need for a public water supply came early in her municipal existence, and earlier than public opinion was prepared to indorse the undertaking of an enterprise of such magnitude. Some bitter experience must needs first come as an educator, and it did come from time to time, as in several fires among the mills, the burning of the town-house, the destruction of the public library and museum, of several newspaper offices, of the State Reform School building, of important commercial buildings, and finally of an extended conflagration, destroying a whole square in the heart of the city in 1870. The construction of a public water supply is, with rare exceptions, the most important matter which any municipal organization is forced to consider, inaugurate and push on to completion, or, on the other hand, to hinder and defer, while the necessity and devasation continue. After the burning of the town-house in 1844, a committee of citizens was chosen to consider the question of a water supply, but the citizens were not yet ready for united action. An aqueduct company was chartered by the Legislature in 1845, and the city, although invited, declined to take stock to aid the private enterprise. Other charters were obtained from the Legislature in 1852, 1857 and 1865, but the city still declined to foster the enterprise or to agree to pay for public fire hydrants, but constructed some fire-cisterns in the streets. In the mean time there was a thirty thousand dollar fire in the Print-Works, and the library was destroyed. In 1860, Hon. James A. Weston, Jacob F. James and Rev. William Richardson made an extended reconnoisance, covering all the sources available to the city, and presented the information gathered to the City Councils. Mr. J.B. Sawyer prepared a report in 1869. Early in 1881 the City Councils appointed a committee to consider anew the question of a public water supply. This committee employed William J. McAlpine, an eminent engineer, to advise them, and embodied his report with their own for presentation to the City Councils. The report of this last committee, following as it did soon after a disastrous conflagration, led to a petition to the Legislature for the passage of the water act. An "Act to enable the City of Manchester to establish Water-Works" was passed on the 30th of June 1871, and "An Ordinance in relation to Water-Works" was passed by the City COuncils on the 1st day of August in the same year. This ordinance vested the management of the water-works in the mayor ex-officio and six other persons, to be elected by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, and styled the Board of Water Commissioners. Immediately after the passage of the ordinance, Messrs. E.A. Shaw, E.W. Harrington, William P. Newell, Aretas Blood, Alpheus Jay and A.C. Wallace were elected water commissioners, and Hon. James A. Weston, being mayor, became a member of the board, ex-officio. On the following 7th of August this board perfected its organization by the election of Hon. E.A. Straw as president of the board and Hon. S.N. Bell as clerk. The ordinance provided that one of these original commissioners should go out of office each year, and that one members should be annually elected in the month of September, for a six-year term, by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen. There had been up to this time, and still continued to be, much diversity of opinion as to which was the best source of supply and the design of various details of the proposed work. The earnestness with which these matters were publicly discussed and different sources and plans advocated led to the passage of a resolution by the City Councils instructing the commissioners to examine the different systems of water-works in different cities, in order that the best, most economical and advantageous mode of supply the city with water might be adopted. A majority of the board, complying with the instructions of the Councils, visited several cities in New Egnland, and also Montreal, and carefully noted the peculiarities and effectiveness of different systems of water supply. While at Norwich, Conn., they met Colonel J.T. Fanning, engineer of the water-works then recently completed in Norwich, and engineer also of water-works in several other cities, and invited him to make for them an examiniation of the sources of water supply available to the city of Manchester, and to report upon the sources and method of supply which he should deem most advisable for the commissioners to adopt. In the mean time the commissioners obtained permission to use temporarily a supply of water from the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company's reservoir for fire purposes, and pipes of eight inches diameter were laid from the company's main, on Brook Street, along Chestnut, Pearl, and Pine Streets, to Merrimack Street. This line of pipe was commenced in the autumn of 1871, and completed in the following spring, and immediately filled with water for a fire protection. It included about one and three-eights miles of pipe and seventeen fire hydrants, and cost $10,141.15. On completion of the preliminary surveys and report, in the autumn of 1871, Colonel Fanning was appointed chief engineer to the Board of Water Commissioners. The additional surveys, plans and estimates necessary for a detailed comparison of all the sources were completed in the spring of 1872, and the results embodied in a report to the commissioners under the date of March 1st, and the report contained a general map showing all the sources considered. The nearest and most ample volume of water being the Merrimack River, early consideration was given to this source. The Merrimack waters could be pumped to a reservoir that might be conveniently located on the hill east of the State Reform School building, but experiments with the water showed that it must necessarily be filtered when the river was above the ordinary spring level, and that proper filtration would require a heavy annual expense for operation, and a considerable expenditure for construction of filter-beds of sufficient capacity. The Piscataquog River was examined and carefully studied also. It having been urged by a few of the citizens that some of the small ponds northeasterly of the city would furnished supplies of water, Dorr, Chase, Burham and Stevens' Ponds were thoroughly investigated and found, by proper computations, to yield entirely inadequate supplies for the immediate needs, irrespective of the future needs of a growing city. At Maple Falls, in the southeastern part of the town of Candia (distant about eight miles from the city hall) were found natural features admitting the construction of a fine storage reservoir of nearly four hundred acres area, and of considerable mean depth, and having a water-shed of about ten square miles. This storage reservoir would have been at an elevation of two hundred and twenty-three feet above Elm Street at the city hall, and is the only gravitation source near the city that was found to be worthy of adoption. Southeasterly of the city lies Lake Massabesic, having an area of nearly two thousand four hundred acres and water-shed of about forty-five square miles. The outlet of the lake is about four miles from the city hall. Analyses of the Massabesic water showed it to be of most excellent quality for domestic and industrial uses. The vegetable organic matter in the water was found to be 1.66 grains, and mineral matter 1.16 grains, or a total of 2.82 grains per gallon, equivalent to 4.7 parts in 100,000 parts. The stream flowing from this lake is known as Cohas Brook, and enters the Merrimack River at Goffe's Falls. On Cohas Brook, about one-quarter of a mile below the outlet of the brook, near the old McMurphy mill-site, a dam was located and raised to the level of the water in the lake. This, with the canal below the lake, gave a fall of forty-five feet available for power where the pumping-station was located, near the termination of the canal. In the pumping-station were located two pairs of pumps, of the vertical bucket-plunger class, of combined capacity to pump a maximum of five million gallons of water in twenty-four hours. Two Geyelin-Jouval turbines were placed in the building to drive the pumps, having a combined capacity of two hundred horse-power. A pumping-station was constructed of bricks, with slate roof, to contain this machinery, and attached to the station is a commodious tenement for the attendant in charge of the pumping-station. A reservoir of about thirteen million gallons capacity was constructed near the church at Massabesic Centre. The water of the lake is lifted by the pumps one hundred and thirteen feet from the lake to the reservoir, and as the reservoir is elevated one hundred and fifty-two feet above Elm Street at the city hall, the water flows from thence throughout the city by gravity. This reservoir was filled on its completion, near the close of September, 1874, but the pumps had been started early in the previous July, pumping the water through the distribution pipes, with the surplus flowing into the Amoskeag Company's reservoir. The force main from pumps to reservoir, eight thousand one hundred and seventy-one feet in length, and supply main, eight thousand four hundred and ten feet in length, from reservoir to Elm Street, are twenty inches in diameter. The entire pipe system contained, at the completion of the original works, at the close of 1874, one hundred and twenty-two thousand and seventy-one feet of pipes, one hundred and seventy-two stop valves and two hundred and fifteen public fire hydrants, and seventeen thousand six hundred and two feet of small service pipes, laid by the commissioners from the street mains to the property lines for the supply of water consumers. The cost of constructing the works, including cost of lands, water-rights and preliminary surveys, was $614,009.83. The cost of service pipes, meters and operating expenses, during construction of the works was $20,028.75. On the 24th of October, 1874, a public test was made of the water-works by the city Fire Department. During the test sixteen hydrants were brought into simultaneous use, twelve of which were supplying leading hose-streams and four supplying steam fire-engines, and thus wenty powerful streams were arching over Elm Street and its loftiest buildings at the same time, presenting in the sunshiny October afternoon a most brilliant and beautiful scene, and strengthening the condfidence of the citizens in the capacity and efficiency of their public water supply. On completion of the original works, Mr. CHarles R. Walker became their superintendent, and has retained the office ten years. At the close of 1884 the amount of pipes laid had increased to 229,916 feet, about 43.5 miles, the stop-valves to 316 and public fire hydrants to 371 in number, and the service pipes, to a total of 65,766 feet, supply 2476 consumers of water. In the mean time the total cost of construction, including the extensions of the pipe system, had reached $824.989 and the annual income of the water-works for water sold had reached $75,580 or nearly ten percent on the cost. During the ten years the works have been in operation, no conflagration has resulted from the many fires started, and every fire within reach of the works has been extinguished so promptly that there has been no material loss at any single fire. The original cost of the works has undoubtedly been saved to the citizens in prevention of losses by fires, while the city now finds that it has been a financial investment that will, by its outcome, soon reimburse it for the original outlay and further an investment that will return to its citizen proprietors an almost incalculable annual interest of safety, comfort, convenience, and health. (end)