Drainage Survey: "Waiting for the Line to be Cleared."

A CASE OF DRAINING THROUGH
QUICKSAND.

F. F. ROGERS.

The Crapo farm is intersected by the C. & G. T. railway at a point about twelve miles west of Flint, in T. 6, N. R. 5 E. It was formerly bought by ex-Governor Crapo, is now owned by W. W. Crapo and managed by S. T. Crapo, grandson of the ex-governor.

The farm consists of something over 1,000 acres of land, a large part of which originally was a bad marsh depending on Swartz creek for an outlet. The main drainage is secured by a large open ditch extending from Swartz creek westerly through the center of the farm. This ditch, when my attention was first called to it in the summer of 1890, was not deep enough to give satisfactory drainage to the upper parts of the marsh. I ran a careful line of levels along the ditch, taking reading in the bottom of the ditch and on the bank, finding very little fall-about one foot to the mile. I established a grade line from the bed of Swartz creek with a fall of .04 of a foot to 100 feet. This caused a cleaning out and deepening of the old ditch from six inches to one and one-half feet. This was done, but in so doing a stratum of quicksand was encountered, about one foot above the grade line, near the center of the farm, and where the ditch was from four to six feet deep. However, the work was carried on to completion, and the next year I was asked to examine the ditch again and see how much the bottom varied from the established grade. I found it all right except through this quicksand where it had filled, as a matter of course, one foot or more. Then we decided to put in an eight-inch sewer pipe with well cemented joints through this quicksand and on the established grade, the ends opening in silt basins made of plank.

This sewer pipe was laid one side of the center, leaving the open drain obstructed as little as possible. All of the tile on this part of the ditch were admitted to the sewer with the proper connections.

This has been in successful operation over a year; has not varied at all from the grade line as established, carries all of the flow in dry weather, while the open ditch serves for an overflow in times of high water. Thus the lands above the quicksand were provided with as good drainage at though the quicksand had not existed.

THE PRESIDENT: This paper reminds me of an incident in my carly experience, and shows how easy it is sometimes to accomplish what seems to be a very difficult operation. It was the first sewer which I had ever constructed, and I had very little experience in anything but railroad engineering.

I employed two courses of brick and a wooden skew back. These skew backs were eight feet long. The contractor came one day and said he would have to throw up the job; he had gotten into a bed of quicksand and had tried every possible expedient to get through, but with no success. As fast as he would put the brick in they would disappear. I went down to see what the trouble was. I never had had anything to do with any such thing before, but I knew that it wouldn't answer to let him or anyone else know that I didn't know what to do. It happened he had been using some slabs from the saw mill, eight or ten feet long, for holding up the sides of his ditch, and as a last resort, I told him to lay these slabs crosswise, across the ditch, and then go on. He did so, and although that was twenty-one years ago it has not given the slightest trouble since. All that was necessary was to keep the brick out of the quicksand until the mortar had time to set.

MR. SKEELS: I was employed this last summer, in laying the track for the Lansing Driving Club, near this place, on the west side of the grounds. We had to do a good deal of grading, and just as the work was nearly completed, we struck a bed of quicksand-places as large as the table where it was all of a teeter; and they thought they would have to raise the grade of the whole track in order to get rid of it. I suggested to them to lay a tiled drain from that quicksand to a point where they had tiled drain already. This was Saturday. They commenced then, and put tile drain in, and had it in operation carly Sunday morning. Monday noon we made an examination of the ground, and it was solid enough so that we went on with the construction of the track.

PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY AND PUBLIC HEALTH.

W. R. COATS, C. AND S. E.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention:

There is perhaps no question before the American people today, and it involves all the peoples of the entire human race, of such transcendent interest and importance as is the question of Public Water Supply.

The well-being, comfort, health and life of the human race, is more closely identified with, and involved in, the quality of the water used in our domestic economy, than in any otherperhaps all other causes combined.

I speak here in a general sense relative to public water supply; as only in this sense has the engineer very much to do with the subject, practically; yet I wish to treat the subject fully and comprehensively, in both its public and private bearings.

I wish it understood also, that the question of Public Drainage is included as a part of my subject.

Public drainage is made more necessary, indeed almost compulsory, by the introduction of a public water supply, but public drainage is not posssible without the aid of public water supply, so that the two questions naturally and properly go together, and should be treated under one head.

I believe that more ill health, sickness and death results from bad water supply and bad drainage, than from all other causes combined.

Disease germs abound in a thousand fold greater proportion in the water we drink, than in the air we breathe, and are far more dangerous taken into the system with the water, than with the air. I very much doubt whether disease germs are primarily produced in the atmosphere at all, but these germs are doubtless taken up by the atmosphere from the water, and thus conveyed into the human system in the air we breathe.