New Jersey Water Notes.

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New Jersey Water Notes.

If the Hudson County Water company can manage to get its water over to Staten Island, its income, it is claimed, will be over $10,000 a day. The Staten Islanders hold that whatever agreement is claimed by the company to have been made in 1905 with Staten Island was only tentative. Now the company claims to have had the necessary legislation passed to enable it to sell that water. It has since tried on the ingenious dodge of going before the Harbor Line Board of the United States War Department, which has jurisdiction over the water highways in and round New York harbor, and obtained leave to lay pipes from New Jersey to the Staten Island shore—and this without giving any notive to the State water supply commission—the water to be from artesian wells, the pipe-line to convey 100,000,000 gal., instead of $,000,000 daily, as was first contended. It is significant that the location of the wells is at the point where the East Jersey Water company turns its supply of water from the Pequannock and Passaic rivers into the pipes of the New York and Suburban Water company, which supplies Bayonne—whence the pipes already laid start—East Newark. Harrison, Kearny and other municipalties. Work on the wells has been begun, and the closest secrecy is maintained as to the interstate pipe-lines, on which point the State water supply commission has practically refused all information. If once that line were established, there would be no difficulty about supplying any deficiencies in the artesian supply by utilising the other supply derived from the potable waters of the State. The attorney general of the State is to be asked to take the matter up and secure a court ruling on the matter. Meantime, if the company does not cease its work on the pipeline an injunction will be secured. Why is the pipe-line there, is the question. Meanwhile it is claimed that there is plenty of power in the State board of health and the State water supply commission to produce results, and they should be applied to at once. The old State sewage commission, it is pointed out, would have remedied the matter long since. The Camden Post states editorially that “private water companies have found a loophole in the State’s policy of forbidding diversion of potable waters from the State,” and adds that the “law does not specifically forbid” the diversion of water from artisian wells. The Post insists that,” if this contention holds good, a serious defect in the State’s water-conservation law will be disclosed,” which should be remedied by the next legislature. At that rate the water-bearing strata of the Trenton gravels down which the supply for Camden percolates might be pierced, and the “water could be piped across the Delaware to supply Pennsylvania towns. Such diversion would undoubtedly diminish Camden’s supply.”

The Suburban Water company offers to supply North Arlington with water at $82.50 per 3,000 gal.; Jersey City’s street and water board offers to do the same from the Rockaway river watershed at $60 per 1,000,000 gal. —that rate to be reduced at an average of about $3 per 1,000,000 gal. till $40 is the price, when 12,000,000 gal. must be taken. Yet the borough appears to halt between the two offers. It may be noticed that the Belleville waterworks, the property of Jersey City, pays nearly $900 a year taxes—the biggest sum paid by any individual taxpayer—to North Arlington.

Prof. W. T. Sedgwick, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when examined in the proceedings to compel Jersey City Water Supply company to install adequate safeguards against pollution in the Rockaway river watershed, stated that he had visited and inspected the disinfecting plant at Boonton, and that, although the plant was ; i good one for disinfecting purposes, so lom ? as it works, it was by no means sufficient, and that an adequate sewage system should ta ke its place,

Branchville owners of riparian rights along Dry brook, below the proposed site of the reservoir for that town’s water system, have entered a vigorous prote st against converting the water of the stream for the use of the borough. The system will be gravity for domestic and fire purposes.

At Dover the water board sent a bill for $18,000 to the Richardson & Boynton company, which is accused o f having used surreptitiously the town’s water supply system for six years. It is said to have been discovered that the company was using for all purposes water which under an agreement with the town had been provided for use only in case of fire. A valve between a 6-in. main and a standpipe at the company’s plant, which made further diversion imposs ible. The reservoirs are now filled up from th e springs with which they are connected and furnishing a larger quantity of water than i s required and without the necessity of pur nping. It is further said that there are avai lable affidavits from employes stating that they had opened the valve just closed and made the water available for use in the facto ry at the bidding of persons in authority in t he factory.

The workhouse at Long ford, Ireland, situated at a distance of about 1 mile from the town, was burned. Although the wat er mains of Longford pass the buildings, they were not available, owing to a dispute with the town council, and the nearest water supply was three-quarters of a mile away. Notwithstanding that the military fire brigade had no water, it managed to save the building adjoining the main building. The loss. was $50,000.

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New Jersey Water Notes.

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New Jersey Water Notes.

Jersey City still insists in the suit with the Jersey City Water Supply company as to the safeguards to be adopted along the Boonton watershed to prevent the pollution of the Rockaway river supply. That is now the only question to be settled, as the new waterworks sys tem has been completed and is ready to be handed over to the city. The company holds that chemicals will kill all the bacteria; the city claims that intercepting sewers are necessary. In reality, the question has resolved itself into one of dol lars and cents, the company being naturally anxious to avoid the expense of constructing the intercepting sewers. The Newark Evening News, in an editorial on the subject, in which it sympathises with neither party, now points out that the “real issue” is whether the citizens of Jersey City “can ever hope to have a pure supply of water from the reservoir on the Rockaway river near Boonton, whatever measures of purification may he taken by Dover, Rockaway and the hamlets along the stream. We believe that, as an engineering and sanitation problem, the answer must be in the negative.” The Rockaway valley nowhere permits of the escape of sewage, and the News is of the opinion that Jersey City should not take the water supply at Boonton, but abandon it for a supply above the present sources. It need not accept the contract, and it would do future generations a wrong if it did so.”

If the Hudson County Water company can legally attain its object and furnish water to Staten Island—Richmond borough, New York— it is held by the opponents of the project that it may be blocked by insistence on the fact the company must lay a new main or set of mains all the way from the Belleville wells to the point of delivery on the island. This, they assert, would require an expenditure of $100,000 or more, and would hold up the completion of the proposed water supply system until long alter the time-limit set in the contract. It is denied that the company could ever furnish anything like the amount daily that it has engaged to supply at a pressure of GO lb. to the sq. in. at the point of delivery on the island. That would involve building and maintaining a pumping station, if the water was delivered front the Belleville wells. Were the station at Belleville, it would have to produce there a pressure of about 110 lb. to the sq. in. The Hudson County Water company is now furnishing a potable supply to Bayonne and municipalities in West Hudson county. This supply comes from the East Jersey Water company’s pumping station at Little Falls. The mains which convey it run close to the Belleville wells; but, under the law, cannot be used for the transmission of water to Staten Island, unless the Little halls supply is completely shut of! from this pipe line. The contract calls for the delivery of a minimum of 3,000,000 gal. a day, and a maximum of 8.0(H),000. This would take, at the maximum, a total of about 4,000,000 for Staten Island, Rayonnc and the West Hudson towns.

I he mayor of Kearny has not permitted the connection to be made between that city and North Arlington by the laying of a pipe by the Suburban Water company. North Arlington has laid a new main with which the connection was to be made. To do so about 15 ft. of the Belleville turnpike had to be dug up. The trench was tilled up again. There seems to be an idea that the Suburban Water company had attempted to steal a connection with the North Arlington system of mains.

In a recent address before the Montclair Civic association Governor Fort intimated that the people of the State might soon be called on to vote oil a proposition to incur a debt exceeding the $100,000 limited by the constitution, in order to acquire lands for a water preserve. He said that five men own more than 100,000 acres of land in the northern part of the State, and that it can be acquired now for State uses at a reasonable figure. In fact, E. H. Harriman has offered to donate 23.000 acres free of charge towards such a water preserve.

The Essex Falls Water company will furnish Verona by contract with a maximum amount of 15,000 gal. of water per day at 14 cents per 1,000 gal., for a period of three years. Other conditions are that the water is to be delivered to the borough line through a 6-in, main. Cancelation of the contract cannot take place until after the expiration of a six-months’ notice by either of the contracting parties.

Water Supt. Travis, of Orange, says that the city has at least a sufficiency of water for fire protection. With the new auxiliary reservoir on the mountain side in full commission, there is not only no lack of pressure, but so much of it, even at the points in question, that two men cannot hold a fire hose nozzle when it is fully turned on. The cost was heavy; but the city got the worth of its money.

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