New Jersey Water News.
At South Orange a water famine is not feared, and President Carroll P. Bassett of the Commonwealth Water company, at Summit, states there will be no further trouble experienced with the water situation and that matters will be satis factorily adjusted in a short time. Improvements are being made at the plant which, when com pleted, would materially increase the water supply. They are progressing in the work of making a connection with the East Orange water main, although they hope there will be no occasion to call on the sister city for relief. At the point of connection a water meter will be installed in order to tell what the consumption is, if they are obliged to take East Orange water.
The State water supply commission at Trenton has decided that until the Hudson County Water Company actually attempt s to divert water, comingled from surface and subterranean sources, to Staten Island, no action will be taken to restrain the proposed diversion. This decision was reached after Attorney-General Edmund Wilson had advised, during an informal conference, that the injunction granted in 1905 restraining the company from diverting potable surface water of the State to Staten Island is still in force. The object of the conference was to obtain the views of the attorney-general as to the commission’s powers under the law to prevent the diversion of either surface or subterranean waters afid to ascertain how far they might proceed to prevent anticipated diversion in advance. Mr. Wilson states that in his opinion the act under which the commission w-as created gives it no jurisdiction or control over waters obtained from subterancan sources. Accordingly nothing will be done to interfere with the Hudson Water Company’s plans for piping water from the driven wells at Belleville for the use of Staten Island until such time as the water may be mingled with that from the Passaic river at Little Falls. The injunction referred to was granted by Vice-Chancellor Bergen in 1905 and was confirmed by the Court of Errors and Appeals. Whether the diverting of a mixture of surface and sub-surface water, which is the company’s plan to save building a separate pipe line from Belleville to Bayonne, is a violation of the terms of this injunction is the question that the courts will be called on to decide.
Auburn, N. Y., is about to install a filtration plant, near the proposed new low-pressure pumping station. The water in the filtration beds will run off into mains that will conduct it to the present lower pumping station, where the engines will force it into the city mains purified and under high pressure for fire purposes. The cost of the plant is not yet known; but Messrs. Hazen and Whipple, New York water experts, are charged with the task of preparing the estimates and plans.