Author: G. P. Brown

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-18

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 9781331684015

Excerpt from Drainage Channel and Waterway: A History of the Effort to Secure an Effective and Harmless Method for the Disposal of the Sewage of the City of Chicago, and to Create a Navigable Channel Between Lake Michigan and the Missippi River Chicago stands at the summit of the watershed between the basins of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, yet its drainage problem has been a most perplexing one. This has been due, in part, to the fact that the great lake at the city's feet has been both the source of its water supply and the receptacle for its sewage. The inability to reconcile these conflicting conditions became apparent many years ago, but the city was unwilling to make a radical change in its methods. With a perpetual fountain of unparalleled water on one side from which to draw at will, and a declivity on the other down which the waste might be discharged, an ideal plan of sewage disposal was offered. But there were long believed to be insurmountable obstacles to its adoption. One makeshift followed another, and the people were urged to believe that it was neither dangerous nor obnoxious to drink diluted sewage. At length the conclusion was forced upon the municipality that the public drains must be turned away from Lake Michigan. The disposal of sewage upon land was found to be impracticable and chemical treatment impossible. The inhabitants of the valleys of the Desplaines and Illinois rivers protested against the contamination of those streams. It was finally shown that sewage soon became harmless and inoffensive if properly diluted. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.