Part 8

Mr. DALLYN. They lack the water-supply problem, and have to treat the sewage from the æsthetic point of view more than any other. I have in mind the ability of the stream to take up the putrescible matter, without giving out odors. In places where several centers must utilize the same stream there must needs be a more intense purification than where one center only enters it. With your problem the purification as to bacterial removal will have to be some function of the population in the congested centers. In other points, like Sarnia and Port Huron, the bacterial degree of pollution is not very heavy, not reaching the 500 standard Prof. Phelps recommends as being considered a contravention of the treaty, and the function of population does not amount to very much, so here you would have to treat it very much better than you apparently need. As a rule, when you use chemicals to disinfect sewage, you get no action at all until you remove about 60 per cent. You get a 60 per cent removal or you get nothing. It seems to be inert; and then you have to increase your quantities till you get up to 100 per cent removal, the last 10 per cent taking almost half as much again as the 90 per cent.

Mr. POWELL. Your idea is that under no circumstances should there be any discharge into the large or small stream without purification to the extent of sedimentation?

Mr. DALLYN. I believe our civilization has reached a point now where, as far as self-respect goes, we are required to separate the gross solids from the liquid matter before discharging them into any stream.

Mr. TAWNEY. Do you desire to be heard at this time, Mr. Sloman?

Mr. SLOMAN. Not necessarily at this time, but at such a time as is convenient to the commission.

Mr. TAWNEY. Do the representatives from any of the cities on the United States side wish to be heard before taking recess?

STATEMENT OF MR. MASON L. BROWN, RIVER ROUGE, MICH.

Mr. BROWN. As the representative of the River Rouge Village, I wish to say a word. I have also been authorized to make objections for the village of Ford and the city of Wyandotte. My objections have been placed before the commission by the gentleman who has just spoken, and I think I can add nothing more to his remarks. The objections are purely local and are engineering features, and as to the desirability of purifying the sewage before entering into the stream, I think all these villages are in accord, and very anxious to do whatever is right and necessary on that. In regard to River Rouge, I may say that we have a separate system there. We realized what was coming some six years ago, and we provided for it, and all we have to do now is to put in the purification plant. Our objection in regard to River Rouge is a local one, and the engineer who has just spoken has outlined it, and if we are not tied down to the exact locality, as shown on your engineer’s plan, we are thoroughly satisfied. We would rather object to the location, if we have to follow his suggestion. We can only say that the present pumping plant there is ample, without putting in an intercepting sewer, saving some $20,000 odd.

Mr. TAWNEY. Are the municipalities you are now speaking for included in the proposed consolidated sewage district, referred to in this report?

Mr. BROWN. They are not.

Mr. TAWNEY. Then the plan for sewage treatment recommended by the consulting engineers does not apply to the municipalities you represent?

Mr. BROWN. It does. The Rouge and Wyandotte are both specifically mentioned, and it is for those I am speaking. We are very anxious to have this carried out. It is simply a matter of local detail. We would like to have some changes, and we would get the same and possibly better results and at a great saving to these cities. In other words, we could do away with the interceptors.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have you any plan to suggest?

Mr. BROWN. Taking the report of your engineer as it stands, it calls for an intercepting sewer. The treatment plan is per capita, and the maintenance the same. In looking over this report I find there is very little difference in regard to the cost of construction and maintaining the treatment plan for either a small population or a large one. In other words, in the village of Ford we have three outlets, and instead of building an intercepting sewer, tearing up all their pavement, why could we not put in those three plants, dividing it up, providing the figures in that report are correct? The same as to Wyandotte. I am simply taking the report as it stands. I do not see any necessity for an intercepting sewer.

Prof. PHELPS. I may merely say, in reference to what Mr. Dallyn has said, that it is not anticipated that we would be fortunate enough to find in our brief survey the most feasible and the most economical plans. There is no intention of insisting upon the plans specifically, and if the cities and towns interested are able to save money and accomplish the result the commission desires to accomplish, we say Godspeed. It is results we are after. It is quite proper that the city shall take advantage not only of their more detailed and accurate engineering knowledge of the local situation, but also of those tremendous improvements in sewage disposal which are going ahead so fast it is difficult to keep track of them.

Mr. POWELL. Take that particular point of treating all the sewage at one point, or at three points; that is, having an intercepting sewer or not having one.

Prof. PHELPS. The engineer can advise him if he is correct. My personal experience would lead me to doubt whether he can save money by building three plants instead of one. However, if he can save money let him do it.

Mr. BROWN. I just took the statement of the report itself. It took so much per capita and disregarded the population entirely. We have never made an detailed figures. This came up hurriedly, and we have nothing to suggest. We are heartily in favor of the improvements, but in regard to the commission tying us down as to details, we would like to know how much limit we have if we get results.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have you any objection to or criticism upon the standard of purification set forth in the report, or, in other words, have you any criticism upon the result that is to be attained with respect to purification of water mentioned in the report?

Mr. BROWN. No criticism whatsoever.

Mr. TAWNEY. The municipalities you represent are entirely in accord with the report, so far as it relates to standardization?

Mr. BROWN. Absolutely.

Mr. POWELL. You recognize the obligation of your community to get rid of the sewage, but you want to do it as economically as possible.

Mr. BROWN. That is exactly the fact.

Mr. POWELL. You do not quarrel with the onus being thrown upon you to do it in some way?

Mr. BROWN. No. All these villages seem to be very willing to do something, and they are anxious. They know of this investigation, and they have delayed works on that account, and they are very anxious to do the best possible good for all.

Mr. TAWNEY. Your present population is 15,000?

Mr. BROWN. That is the population they gave for River Rouge, but I think it is not as large as that. I think you will find the present population is only about half of that.

Mr. TAWNEY. Is there anyone here representing any of the other municipalities on the United States side?

STATEMENT OF ALEXANDER ADAMS, OF ECORSE, MICH.

Mr. ADAMS. I am here representing Ecorse, and the council there met and said they were in accord with the arrangement. They wanted some system of treating the sewage, but nothing has been done at all. The water supply there is furnished by the Detroit water board.

Mr. TAWNEY. The council has taken action in the matter, you say?

Mr. ADAMS. No; they have not taken action.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have they taken any action in approving or disapproving of the report of our sanitary engineer?

Mr. ADAMS. They approve of the idea set forth in the report.

Mr. TAWNEY. With respect to the treatment of sewage and the purification of the water?

Mr. ADAMS. Yes.

Mr. TAWNEY. Then is Mr. Murdock here?

Mr. ADAMS. I represent Mr. Murdock.

Mr. TAWNEY. Is there anything further? Do you occupy any official position in the village?

Mr. ADAMS. None at all.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have you any information as to whether or not the council contemplate, in the near future, proceeding with work which they recognized as being necessary for the purpose of purifying the sewage, and so forth?

Mr. ADAMS. They have not yet. They have proposed to put in some extensions to the present system, but not purifying it.

Mr. MAGRATH. You understand that they anticipate looking for certain results in the way of improvement in the treatment of the sewage?

Mr. ADAMS. Yes.

Mr. POWELL. You are to be congratulated, because you recognize the obligation and propose to face it like men.

Mr. ADAMS. Yes; it is our opinion something should be done, and we want it to be the best arrangement.

Mr. TAWNEY. Anyone here representing Trenton?

Mr. BLOMSHIELD. Yes. I would like to take it up this afternoon. I have thought of some notes I would like to jot down.

Mr. TAWNEY. Mr. Jennings is here, representing the city of St. Clair. What is your official position, if any?

Mr. JENNINGS. Mayor of the city of St. Clair.

STATEMENT OF MR. MAX JENNINGS, OF ST. CLAIR, MICH.

Mr. JENNINGS. I am mayor of the city of St. Clair.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have you or your sanitary engineers received the report of our consulting engineers with respect to remedying the pollution of these waters?

Mr. JENNINGS. We have.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have you any suggestions or criticisms?

Mr. JENNINGS. No.

Mr. TAWNEY. Or any statement you would wish to make?

Mr. JENNINGS. I was in hopes we would have the engineer with us to-day. He is not here. I presume he will be here this afternoon. It has been placed in his hands, and he assured me he would be here to present his views this afternoon. The superintendent of the electric light and waterworks understands the situation better than I do.

Mr. TAWNEY. You have had the report studied by your engineer?

Mr. JENNINGS. It has been placed in the hands of Mr. C. L. Weil; he is not our engineer, but is the consulting engineer of the Diamond Crystal Salt Works, and it may be he will be here right after lunch.

STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM WOLLATT, OF WALKERVILLE, ONTARIO.

Mr. TAWNEY. Mr. Wollatt, you represent Walkerville?

Mr. WOLLATT. In connection with the Essex Board of Utilities Commission.

Mr. TAWNEY. That is for Essex County?

Mr. WOLLATT. For the municipalities in Essex County, opposite Detroit, beginning with Ford, Walkerville, Windsor, Sandwich, Sandwich West, and Ojibway. That is running down the river.

Mr. MAGRATH. The extreme distance between the two points is what?

Mr. WOLLATT. Probably about 12 miles.

Mr. GARDNER. Have you full jurisdiction over the whole territory?

Mr. WOLLATT. This bill which I have in my hand gives the commission complete jurisdiction. This is an act passed by the Ontario Legislature last session. We just simply wish to report that this act has been granted to the utilities commission, and we are getting busy. We have a meeting this week, at which action will be taken as to what the outcome will be of the matters under discussion. We are in deep sympathy with the water question and the sewage matter; but just what the utilities commission will do we can not say at the present moment. We are not that far advanced yet, except to say, of course, that we will have to be governed by the provincial board of health.

Mr. TAWNEY. You are subject to the Ontario or Provincial Board of Health?

Mr. WOLLATT. Yes.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have you given any study, or have your engineers given any study, to the report of the sanitary engineers of this commission?

Mr. WOLLATT. No; not yet.

Mr. MAGRATH. Have you organized yet?

Mr. WOLLATT. Just last week, so far as the appointment of a chairman and secretary; but no further organization. We will do that this week.

Mr. MAGRATH. What are your purposes?

Mr. WOLLATT. The bill sets out that we may construct main waterworks, which will be a system taking in from Ford to Ojibway and sewers in similar manner, if they are thought desirable. Whether it will be done under this or individually the commission have not got that far yet. We are in a preliminary stage in regard to that yet. We thought we would come here and let you gentlemen know we are alive to this situation, and that we have taken action in having this bill passed.

Mr. MAGRATH. Your utility commission exists purely for water problems?

Mr. WOLLATT. Water and sewage. We are hoping to include other matters later, such as town planning, and so on. That will come later.

Mr. MIGNAULT. Is your commission already named?

Mr. WOLLATT. Yes; and the commission has been appointed.

Mr. MIGNAULT. Is the commission appointed named in the bill?

Mr. WOLLATT. The municipalities are named in the bill, with power in the municipality to name their commissioners, the mayors being ex officio members.

Mr. POWELL. Have you copies of that bill?

Mr. WOLLATT. No. I can let you have this, and we can probably secure more for you, if necessary.

Mr. MIGNAULT. The commission has been formed already and constituted?

Mr. WOLLATT. Yes.

Mr. MIGNAULT. And proposes to consider these problems?

Mr. WOLLATT. Yes.

Mr. MIGNAULT. And that is the position you take?

Mr. WOLLATT. That is our position.

Mr. MIGNAULT. You have doubtless received the report of our sanitary engineer?

Mr. WOLLATT. Yes.

Mr. MIGNAULT. Have you any remarks to make with respect to it?

Mr. WOLLATT. No: I must confess that I have not, because I have not studied the situation.

Mr. MAGRATH. Who are the officers of the commission?

Mr. WOLLATT. Myself, as chairman--William Wollatt--and J. E. Hoan, Walkerville, secretary. We have no further officers appointed yet, although this bill empowers us to engage engineers and various other officers as we may find necessary as we proceed. The municipalities, we may say, have all consented; that is, the municipalities named and included in this for the commission to take the matter of sewer and water out of their hands and place it in the hands of the commission.

Mr. MAGRATH. What led to the obtaining of that commission? Was it dissatisfaction with the present conditions over there?

Mr. WOLLATT. Not altogether. We had in view a very large growth on that side of the border, and we were not as well provided with water as we thought we ought to be, and that was one of the main things; then the unsatisfactory conditions entered into it.

Mr. TAWNEY. I suppose economic considerations entered into it?

Mr. WOLLATT. Yes; that entered into it partly.

Mr. MAGRATH. Are you prepared to indorse the results of the examination and the recommendation by our sanitary experts?

Mr. WOLLATT. That is a question I would hardly like to answer at this time without having the proper consultation with the engineer who may be appointed to go into the matter in detail. We are heartily in sympathy with the proposition to obtain pure water. That is what we want, but just how we shall obtain such we can not at this moment say.

Mr. MAGRATH. But you realize that you must live up to the treaty conditions; that you must not pollute water to the injury of health or property on this side of the boundary?

Mr. WOLLATT. Yes; and we presume they will not do anything on this side to injure us.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have you copies of the report?

Mr. WOLLATT. I believe we have.

Mr. TAWNEY. One has been sent to all the villages, and I did not know whether your board had one.

Mr. WOLLATT. Yes; we have one.

(Adjourned till 2.30 p. m.)

AFTER RECESS.

The commission reconvened at the expiration of the recess.

Mr. TAWNEY. Mr. Jennings, we will hear you now.

Mr. JENNINGS. Gentlemen, I am not prepared to say very much on this preliminary report that has been made, the engineering part of it being out of my line, but I will say for the city of St. Clair that we indorse this project in principle, although perhaps the engineering points of it we might not agree with.

Mr. TAWNEY. You mean that your city indorses the results of the investigations so far as they relate to the treatment of sewage and the purification of water?

Mr. JENNINGS. Yes, sir; we are heartily in sympathy with the purification of water. We think it is necessary and we certainly shall do all we can to push the project along.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have you any criticism to make in respect to the standards proposed for the treatment of the water?

Mr. JENNINGS. Nothing that I know of. The preliminary plans as drawn up by your engineer I will leave for Prof. Weil, of St. Clair, to discuss with you. He is the consulting engineer of the Diamond Crystal Salt Co., and a man who is well up in his line.

STATEMENT OF PROF. CHARLES LEWIS WEIL, OF ST. CLAIR, MICH.

Prof. WEIL. Mr. Chairman, Mayor Jennings asked me to look over the plans and the report of the consulting engineer of the commission, which I have done. I am not here to report upon these plans from the standpoint of an engineer, but I am here simply as one having some interest in what should be done. What I have to say could hardly be construed as other than the impressions of one who has read the report and looked over the plans and is interested in the outcome. In fact, until Mr. Gardner made some statements to me here to-day I did not know just what the object of this meeting was. I understood that we were here to be instructed and not to make comments. So that, as I am trying to emphasize, what I have to say will be rather in the way of my impressions than carefully thought out criticisms or considerations.

As Mayor Jennings has said, I was impressed with the report in its entirety and not only as it relates to St. Clair but, seeing it for the first time yesterday, I admit that I read pretty nearly the whole report.

I was impressed with the fact that the plan proposed for St. Clair divides the city into two sections, with the point of purification as a division, and that might be objectionable from a real estate standpoint. It may not be practicable to do otherwise, but that is what they have done at St. Clair. Sewage disposal should be at the outskirts and not in the center of the city.

Again, I was impressed with the fact that the Diamond Crystal Salt Co., which is the chief industry located at St. Clair, is at the proposed point of purification and disposal. That might constitute a hardship for the leading industry of the town. The Diamond Crystal Salt Co. has recently expended a great deal of money for a new intake pipe 24 inches in diameter and 350 feet long. It has recently expended a large sum of money for a filtration system to filter all the water that goes into the plant, to the salt beds, and through its vessels. It is expending a large sum of money for sterilizing the brine and carrying it to a temperature of 280° F. before it is used.

It may be known to this commission that experiments made in France show that pathogenic germs live for six months in brine not subjected to a temperature of 100° C. The department in France that made the experiments corresponds to our bureau in the United States having to do with pure foods and drugs. In France they were even going so far as to prohibit the sale of so-called natural salt, sea salt, and so forth, for the table, on the basis of impurity. The ordinary vacuum plant, as you may know, carries a temperature of only about 120° F., and that does not destroy pathogenic germs in brine.

As I have stated, the Diamond Crystal Salt Co. has gone to a very large expense to produce pure salt. The location of a plant of the kind mentioned at that point, notwithstanding the amount of proof that could be brought to bear to show that harmful results would be a minimum, might possibly be very objectionable. I can say that, in my individual opinion, and not speaking for the company, I feel that the company would be willing to cooperate with the city of St. Clair to secure a location that would be more advantageous to this plant. I am not criticizing the proposition, but simply stating that the proposed location may be objectionable, and I may be wrong with regard to that.

Another impression that I got from the report was this: I found that it says that the population of this city has not increased in 25 years. I think that is about right. I also found in looking over the report that they would pay over 2 to 1 to maintain this plant if it were put in as proposed; that is, the cost of maintenance would be, roughly speaking, 2 to 1: say, 50 cents perhaps in Detroit and 90 cents in St. Clair, something like twice the expense on a city that is in no way an increased menace if it has not changed its conditions at all. Therefore it would appear to me as a taxpayer and one interested from the outside that the installation of such a plant at the undivided expense of a small city like St. Clair might perhaps be a burden, and hardly a just burden, on the taxpayers when this is, in a measure, an international matter. I understand from Mr. Barron that the city would be subject to a considerable expense through its change in pavements if the plan at present proposed is carried out.

The summation of what I have had to say is probably this: That interested in the improvement of and desirous to combine in this plan, a small city like St. Clair has to be very guarded in its commendation or acceptance on account of the conditions that might be imposed through a too hasty conclusion in the matter. I think that is about all I have to say.

Mr. POWELL. What is the population of St. Clair?

Prof. WEIL. Three thousand.

Mr. TAWNEY. You probably observed in reading the report of the consulting sanitary engineer that three possible sites for the treatment plant were studied, and I understand that the one that is recommended here is the one that you are objecting to.

Prof. WEIL. Yes, sir.

Mr. TAWNEY. Have you considered the objection stated by the engineers to either of the other two?

Prof. WEIL. Yes; as I recall, I have. I think it was simply a matter of expense. Is that correct?