USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Quincy > Town annual report of Quincy 1885-1886 > Part 6
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Availing ourselves of the appropriation made at the last annual town meeting, we have caused surveys to be made, and plans and profiles prepared, covering the greater portion of the system recommended by the committee of 1885. The plans and profiles have been made with special reference to the future construction of the sewers.
Preliminary surveys have also been made of the Wollaston and Atlantic districts. As consulting engineer, the Board were fortunate in securing the services of Mr. Eliot C. Clarke, under whose direction the plans have been made.
The system of sewers recommended by him in the accompa- nying report is approved by the Selectmen, and we refer the same to the town for adoption. We do not at this time recom- mend the town to proceed with the immediate construction of the entire system, but that the brick main, together with the principal mains and branches in districts A, E, and F, be built first. The route line of the main sewer from Elm Street to a point on Washington Street near the outlet is located princi- pally through vacant lands, and we would recommend that on this portion of the line no assessment of cost be made on the abutting estates, provided the right of way be given by the owners. If at any future time parties desire to enter drains into the main, then an equitable sum to be charged. Also, on the same conditions no assessment of cost to be made on that por- tion of the Wollaston and Atlantic main beginning at Central
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Avenue and running northerly to a point on Hancock Street near the railroad bridge.
To apportion equitably the cost of the sewers is a very diffi- cult problem to solve. Assessments to be valid can be levied only on the lands benefited by the sewer, exclusive of the build- ings thereon ; the benefits being, as we understand, the same in. kind to all, viz., the opportunity afforded to drain into the sewer and the resulting increase in the value of the lands drained. On the plan recommended, the cost of draining each acre of land in district A being practically the same, and that cost being the amount to be assessed, it would seem that the value of the land should not be considered. As a rule, it costs most to drain the low flat lands. These lands are of comparatively small value, but it is evident that they are most benefited by the construction of sewers. We are of the opinion that any plan that leaves the amount to be assessed a matter of judgment will prove unsatis- factory, and that it would be better as a whole to adopt some uniform standard from which the assessments can be determined. We submit the following suggestions, leaving the matter to be decided by those whose duty it may be to make the assessments :
First. That on all estates fronting on streets or ways where sewers are built, the apportionment of cost be based on the areas of said estates within a fixed depth of one hundred feet from such way or street.
Second. That in making assessments, each drainage district, designated by letters on the plan, be considered separately. The amount to be assessed per square foot, to be ascertained by esti- mating the cost of constructing sewers in all the streets and ways within the limits of the district, to this cost to be added an equitable portion of the actual cost of the brick main, and divid- ing the result obtained by the total number of square feet liable to assessment gives the assessment per square foot. By this plan the total cost of the smaller mains and branches for each district is averaged, and a uniform price established. Each estate abutting is assessed, not its proportional cost of the sewer into which it immediately drains, but on the cost of the average sized sewers for the entire district; the theory being that the opportunity afforded of draining the estates is substantially a uniform benefit to all the property within the district.
Third. That assessments be made on estates when sewers are completed in the street on which it borders, and it is practi- cal to enter drains from the estate.
Taking the engineer's estimate of cost as a basis, and assum- ing the cost of the brick main to be distributed as follows, viz.,.
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one third to district A, to districts B and E one sixth each, and the remaining cost to districts F, H, and D; the assessments on the plan suggested would be substantially twelve mills per square foot for district A ; for districts B, E, and F, eleven mills per square foot ; for district C, six mills per square foot.
GEO. H. FIELD, Selectmen
ELIAS A. PERKINS,
CHRISTOPHER A. SPEAR,
of Quincy.
REPORT ON A PROPOSED SYSTEM OF SEWERAGE.
BY ELIOT C. CLARKE, C. E.
TO THE SELECTMEN OF THE TOWN OF QUINCY :
I was requested by you to consider the subject of sewerage at Quincy, and report my opinion as to the best system to adopt, having regard to both efficiency and economy. Having made my self familiar with the topography of your town, examined plans of the principal streets to ascertain their profiles and elevations, and received much information as to the local conditions affecting the problem, I respectfully report as follows :
In designing a sewerage system, the first and most important question to decide is : What shall be done with the sewage after it has been collected ? There is no profit to be made out of it, and the problem is : How to get rid of it at the least ex- pense ? By far the cheapest thing to do with it is to let it flow off into some water-course, and this disposition of it will be sat- isfactory, provided the sewage can be discharged into a great volume of water at a point where there is a strong current to carry off and widely disperse the putrescible particles contained in it Unless so dispersed by a current, these particles settle in masses near the sewer outlet and decompose slowly, causing offensive and dangerous emanations. Unless there is a reason- able certainty that nobody will ever live near to the outlet, such disposition of the sewage is not safe. When neither a good current nor a remote outlet is attainable, the sewage should be purified more or less by filtration through land or by chemical precipitation, either of which processes will considerably increase the cost of disposal.
At first sight it would seem as if Quincy offered unusually favorable opportunities for the discharge of sewage, since it fronts on the sea, is bounded at either end by rivers, and is in- dented by tidal estuaries. Further examination, however, shows that the choice of places of disposal is very limited. The whole sea front is unavailable on account of the broad areas of flats which are exposed at low tide, and also because there are no decided currents there to disperse the suspended particles.
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Should a sewer outlet be established in Quincy Bay, near Black's Creek or Sachem's Brook, there would soon be deposits on the flats in its neighborhood, and the odors from these might be carried half a mile or more inland With the small amount of sewage which would be discharged during the next few years, the nuisance from this source might not be serious, but it surely would become so as the town grew and the amount of sewage increased. It would not do to put sewage into Town River above the dam, because there is not enough water there to cause sufficient dilution, and what water there is being nearly still, offensive deposits would occur in the immediate vicinity of population. Taking down the dam would not sufficiently do away with the danger. A little sewage might not cause any nuisance if put into Town River below the dam ; but if any con- siderable amount were put there, the shores would soon become foul and would smell.
There only remain for consideration Neponset River and Weymouth Fore River, at either end of the town. At either of these places points for sewer outlets can be selected, where there is plenty of water and are also good currents, so that moderate amounts of sewage could be continuously discharged with rea- sonable assurance that no nuisance would result. Should your population increase rapidly, and the amount of sewage to be dis- posed of become very great, it is not absolutely certain that no trouble would ever be experienced from outlets at these points. I think that sewage mixed with the outgoing tide at Weymouth River would not thereafter be heard of, but if a large quantity were carried up stream with the flood tide, some sludge might accumulate on the shores above the bridge. Similarly, much sewage discharged into Neponset River might cause deposits on the flats bordering it, and if the neighboring territory became thickly settled, some complaints might finally arise.
Fortunately, lines of retreat are left open in each case. A sewer discharging into Weymouth River can be so arranged, as to position and elevation, that if objectionable deposits should ever be caused by the flood tide, it will be possible, at compar- atively slight additional expense, to build a large tank in which the sewage arriving during flood tide shall be stored and let out only during ebb tide. Complaints against an outlet into Nepon- set River would be first heard from residents of Neponset Vil- lage on the Boston side. None can justly be made so long as the city sewers empty at the same point. Should a nuisance arise there in the future, the city doubtless will extend a branch of its main drainage system to intercept the Neponset sewage. In
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that case it will be comparatively easy to convey any Quincy sewage across the river by a siphon and empty it into the Bos- ton system.
All things considered, these seem to be the most satisfactory positions for sewer outlets, and the next question is, which of them to select. Sewage from the south and west half of the town, as far north as Adams Street, can be delivered into Wey- mouth River by gravitation ; but to reach that point from regions north of Adams Street, the sewage would have to be elevated by pumping. Conversely, sewage from the north half of the town can flow by gravitation to Neponset River; but if that be selected as the only outlet, sewage from the south part of the town must be pumped. From an area of low land, at about marsh level, on the north side of Quincy Village, sewage cannot gravitate to either outlet. The first cost of a pumping station would be at least $20,000, and the yearly running expenses would be from $3,000 to $5,000, which is the interest on about $100,000 more. Therefore, in order to avoid pumping, in the interest of economy, it will be best to have three main outlets. One of these should be in the channel of Weymouth Fore River at Quincy Point bridge, another in the channel of Neponset River near the railroad bridge, and the third in Town River, below the dam.
The last mentioned is in the least satisfactory position. The amount of sewage discharged there, however, always will be very slight, being only that from the district northeast of Quincy Village. I think there need be no just cause for complaint from this outlet ; but it will be wise to limit as far as possible the amount of sewage to be discharged there, by establishing some restrictions in regard to building on the marsh land which will be tributary to it. Such land does not afford healthful locations for residences, and as there is plenty of upland in your town, there is no necessity for the marsh being much built upon. People who build on such land, because it is cheap, are very apt, finally, to call upon their neighbors to expend large sums in vain attempts to drain and otherwise improve their property.
Having decided on the positions of the outlets, the next prob- lem is, to decide on the locations of the sewers to reach those outlets. In doing this, I have only considered carefully the system emptying into Weymouth River, since I was informed that that is the only one which you contemplate building at present. On the accompanying plan is shown, in red, a com- plete sewerage system for all that portion of Quincy which can be drained towards Weymouth River. The principal main
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sewers, which probably would be built first, are shown in full red lines. The smaller branch sewers, which would be built later, some of which might not be needed for many years, are shown in broken lines. It will be noticed that the outlet is placed on the edge of the main current of the river at Quincy Point bridge. This is thought to be a somewhat more favorable position than at Shipyard Point, since there will be less likeli- hood of the sewage getting into eddies and slack water, where deposits would occur. At the immediate outlet the sewer is designed to be about three feet below marsh level. Thence it follows the valley line near the brook, south of South Street. Another sewer brings to the outlet sewage from the territory on either side of Washington Street, up to the high dividing ridge on Graham's Hill.
On reaching the village, the main sewer divides into several sub-mains. One of these follows Water Street up to West Quincy, another runs through the main village as far as Adams Street, and a third serves the northerly slope of Graham's Hill. The proposed sizes of all of the sewers are marked upon the plan. To determine the proper sizes for the sewers of any system is a matter requiring much good judgment. By the aid of trust- worthy hydraulic formulæ, it is comparatively easy to properly proportion the sizes, if only it is known just how much sewage is to be provided for. The difficulty is to decide how much water to admit to the sewers. Of course the sewers must be large enough to take all of the sewage proper or contaminated water supply. Assuming that it is possible that Quincy Village and West Quincy increase so that in the future they may have a population of 20,000, and that this population may use water at the rate of seventy-five gallons per head every day, this would aggregate 1,500,000 gallons a day, which would flow off through an eighteen-inch pipe. If, therefore, this were all that was ad- mitted to the sewers, the largest main pipe might be only eighteen inches in diameter, and would cost only about two dollars a foot ; although in practice it is found best to build a somewhat larger sewer, to allow for variations in flow, and other contingencies.
If, on the other hand, it is desired to allow the rain water fall- ing on the district to flow off through the sewers, very different structures will be needed. A sewer system for Quincy and West Quincy may finally cover at least eight hundred acres. A rain- fall at the rate of an inch an hour on that area, even if the water reached the sewers at only half that rate, would amount to four hundred cubic feet of water each second, and would
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require for its prompt removal a sewer eight or ten feet in diame- ter, costing $15 or more per lineal foot. A system of sewers large enough to carry off the rain water certainly is more con- venient than any other, and in some cases it may be true economy to build one. Such a system, as a whole, costs about three times as much as one which does not admit the rain.
In the case of Quincy, I think that the additional convenience would hardly be considered worth what it would cost to secure it. Your town has several brooks running through it to carry off surplus rain water, and from places where it does not flow away quickly enough it can be assisted promptly into the nearest water-courses by building comparatively short and inexpensive lines of street drain. I am informed that there are not more than half a dozen places in the town where surface water in the streets causes much inconvenience or damage. Probably the building of twenty catch-basins and ten thousand feet in the aggregate, of shallow pipe drains emptying into the brooks would remedy the evil. The whole of this could be done for $15,000, or less, which would be a great saving, as compared with carry- ing the rain water several miles to the main sewer outlets.
It has been suggested that your sewers might be designed large enough to receive the rain, but that wherever they ap- proached a water-course there should be outlets leading into it through which storm water could overflow, and thus obviate the need of building such large and expensive main sewers as would be necessary were the rain carried throughout their whole extent to the outlets. Such a system is feasible, and under some con- ditions would be economical. But I think that in your case it would cost considerably more than would a separate system for the sewage only, and also, a sufficient number of street drains for surface water. Moreover, there are some objectionable features about overflowing from the sewers. The brooks of your town, into which the sewers would overflow, are somewhat small, and at times have very little water in them. They run through territory which either now is, or hereafter may be, thickly settled. Whenever the sewers overflowed, these brooks would receive, not only the surplus rain water, but also a certain quantity of the sewage which was mixed with it.
It is true that at such times the sewage would be greatly diluted, but traces of its presence might be left on the banks of the brooks, in the shape of rags, paper, half lemons, and other of the solid constituents of sewage. No real nuisance or harm might come from this, but neighboring residents would be un- reasonably afraid of it, and if a case of typhoid fever occurred in
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the vicinity of a storm outlet, the disease, very probably, would be attributed to the sewage. If such a system once were built, it would be impossible to alter it afterwards, so as to do away with the outlets.
It may be said that surface water from the streets, which it is proposed to conduct into the brooks, often is very dirty and might cause nuisances. This is true, but also it is true that people are not afraid of it as they are of sewage, and are not so apt to com- plain of slight smells caused by it. All things considered, I recommend that your town adopt a system of sewerage designed solely for removing the sewage proper, which shall be dis- charged into Weymouth River ; and that, in addition, from time to time as required, you build street drains to conduct surface water into the most accessible water-courses.
As will be seen by the accompanying plan, the main sewer is of brick, egg-shaped, 2 x 3 feet in dimensions. It is the only brick sewer contemplated by the proposed scheme. At the designed inclination of I foot in 1,500, it has a capacity for dis- charging over 250,000 gallons an hour. This may seem an ex- travagant provision to make, even allowing for great future in- crease in population. It must be remembered, however, that the use of water is not uniform. On Monday mornings much more is used than on other days, and sometimes during very cold nights, when faucets are left running to prevent freezing, the discharge is immensely increased. Again, in the spring, when the ground is full of water, much of it finds its way into the sewers through defective joints. In practice it is found that the flow in sewers, even in those to which rain water is not admitted, occasionally may be double or treble the amount of water sup- plied to the district. Very possibly a circular sewer two feet in diameter would be large enough, but the larger oval sewer recommended will cost only twenty cents a foot more, and will have almost double the capacity. This main sewer must have quite a flat inclination, and its proposed egg-shape will concen- trate a slight flow, causing better velocities and less liability to deposit. Moreover, should any deposits ever occur, a 2 x 3 foot sewer is about as small a one as can be entered for inspection or cleaning, without great inconvenience.
It will be seen by the plan, that except this one main sewer, none of the others are larger than fifteen-inch pipe, and none smaller than eight inches ; the greater part of the system consist- ing of the latter size. With the inclinations which are attainable, an eight-inch pipe can be safely relied on to take the sewage from a population of 1,000 persons. Indeed, six-inch pipes would
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be large enough in most cases, and some expense might be saved by using them. The difference in cost, however, is only six cents a foot, and it has been found from experience that six-inch sewers are much more liable than eight-inch ones to become clogged by the miscellaneous rubbish which thoughtless persons are accustomed to throw down house-drains.
I append hereto an approximate estimate of cost of the system shown on the annexed plan. The estimate is based on present mar- ket rates for labor and materials, and the prices are believed to be fully as much as would be charged by responsible contractors. I desire to add that I am indebted to Mr. H. J. Whitman for many of the engineering data used in devising the proposed plan, and also for many valuable suggestions in connection therewith.
Respectfully submitted,
ELIOT C. CLARKE.
ENGINEER'S ESTIMATE OF COST OF CONSTRUCTING THE SEWERS
SHOWN ON THE PLAN.
Brick main from Elm Street to the outlet, total length, 8,860 feet (estimating rock cutting 1,200 cubic yards),
COST.
$39,283 co
Drainage, district marked A on plan, 15,423 feet of 8, 10, 12, and 15 inch pipe,
15,776 00
District B, 5,856 feet of 8, 10, and-12 inch pipe, 6,062 00
District C, 5,232 feet of 8, 10, and 12 inch pipe, 5,642 00
12,403 00
District E, 11,665 feet of 8, 10, and 15 inch pipe, District F extends from Quincy Adams Station to West Quincy, covering substantially the same streets as included in the committee's report of 1885, 9, 115 feet of 8, 10, 12, and 15 inch pipe,
11,000 00
Total cost,
$90, 166 00
REPORT OF THE BOARD OF HEALTH.
The Board of Health organized March 13. Rules and regu- lations were adopted and published, as required by law, in the Quincy Patriot, and also upon cards posted in several public places in the town.
Eugene W. O'Connor and Francis A. Spear were appointed inspectors ; and Terrance Keenan and Peter McConarty, scaven- gers.
Books were prepared, in which the inspectors recorded the sanitary condition of all premises in the town, stating the char- acter of soils and the sites of dwellings, the source of water sup- ply, and the condition of yards, stables, cellars, sinks, cisterns, privies, and cesspools. These books are indexed and are availa- ble for reference, and will greatly facilitate the work of future boards.
One hundred and ten houses are built on low, marshy, or mucky ground. In these the cellars are wet or damp throughout a great part of the year, rendering the dwellings very unhealthy. It was shown by the investigation of the sanitary committee of 1880, that the mortality in these houses was nearly double that of houses built on dry and porous soils. If houses must be built in such places, care should be taken to grade up the site so that the bottom of the cellar would be at least one foot above the highest damp level.
One hundred and forty-seven houses are built on clayey ground, and two hundred and forty-five on rocky ground and granite ledges. In many of these the cellars were found to be wet or damp, and many of the wells were found to be contaminated. The rain water and sewage leaches rapidly through the upper thin stratum of gravel until it reaches the impervious clay or rock surface, along which it is apt to be conducted into the cellar and well.
Thirteen hundred and seventy-four houses are built on gravelly soil. In these, as a rule, the cellars are dry. Many of the wells on these premises were found to be contaminated. This is espe- cially the case in the older and more thickly settled portions of the town. The contents of imperfect privy vaults, cesspools, and sinks having leached into the gravel for many years, the
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latter has become so saturated with filth that it is no longer capable of acting as a filter, and permits watery solutions of these deleterious impurities to enter the wells.
The contamination of drinking water by sewage is indicated by the presence in the water of the chlorides from the common salt of house waste, as well as by the increase of the nitrates and solids. In all the analysis of well water made by the Board of Health, and by the sanitary committee of 1880, the chlorides are marked " strong."
Thirty-nine households obtained their water supply from brooks and springs, one hundred and thirty-nine from cisterns, and fifteen hundred and sixty-five from wells.
The water in many of the cisterns was found to be impure from the presence of dirt washed into them from the roofs and gutters. But very few cisterns had ever been cleaned. The greater number are built in cellars. In this location the contin- ual dampness they produce is liable to render the dwellings unhealthy.
One hundred and fifty-eight wells presented evidence of con- tamination. About seven hundred were located within two rods of a sink-spout, cesspool, or privy, or some other source of pol- lution.
The sewage in one hundred and five instances discharged into the barn cellar. In seven hundred and eighty cases, the sink- spouts discharged upon the surface of the ground, usually quite close to the houses, making an unseemly and dangerous nuisance throughout the hot season. The remainder discharged into cess- pools, by more or less perfect drains. Many of these sink-drains were found to be without traps, affording a ready means for the passage of poisonous gases from the cesspools into the dwellings. The ordinary bell trap found attached to almost all iron sinks is wholly inadequate to prevent the ingress of such gases.
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