**4.2 New York – Early water development**

While unofficially founded as a Dutch trading post in 1624, and centered for decades on Manhattan Island, early New York - like early Los Angeles - relied on domestic water supplies obtainable from sources in the immediate vicinity. Initially, these consisted of shallow, privately-owned wells. Under Dutch rule – a period of about forty years, sanitation and water quality were decidedly poor: accumulations of human and animal waste were common, contaminated runoff into holding ponds was frequent, and there was no concerted effort to regulate harmful activities impinging on locally-adjacent well-users (Koeppel, 2001). Thus, New York's initial efforts to develop a water supply system were largely animated by three concerns: accommodating population growth, averting communicable disease, and achieving both objectives while saving money (Glaeser, 2011; 99).

This cooperative effort to develop and manage local water supplies was animated by two principal, and somewhat contradictory, goals. First, harvesting of the river was necessary to accommodate a population sufficient to allow the young pueblo to serve, within its nexus in hispanic colonial culture, as a trading center for neighboring ranchos and missions (Hundley, 2001). In effect, the young pueblo was a "service" community for a regional economy. Second, the pueblo needed to secure rights to water from regional competitors in order to protect its modestly growing population and its own agricultural and commercial

What made these goals somewhat contradictory was the fact that within a few short years after its founding, interdependence with the Gabrielino community, which served as a labor source for the city's own agricultural and commercial activities, threatened the authority of nearby missions and ranchos (Estrada, 2008). In effect, the Los Angeles River supported the small-scale agricultural and domestic needs of the pueblo, while the pueblo itself functioned

In addition to developing an extensive system of locally-managed and maintained *zanjas*, to secure its local water rights, city officials sought and obtained ratification of a so-called "Pueblo" water right: an entitlement under traditional Spanish law to lay claim to all needed waters in the vicinity. This virtual ownership of water in the Los Angeles River was granted in perpetuity by King Carlos III of Spain in 1781 (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, 2010b). However, various legal manevers were exercised during the 19th century under Mexican and later U.S. rule - to ensure that this Pueblo water right was legally perfected. By the time the City of Los Angeles was incorporated in 1850 under the state's first constitution, following California's admission as the 35th state, the city of 1,600 was

Four years later (1854) the zanjas system became encapsulated into a city department which, within a few years, was leased to a private company and became the Los Angeles City Water Company. This company was purchased by the city in 1902 for some \$2 million in order to facilitate municipal control of the system, and to help facilitate the financial arrangement needed to build an aqueduct. Privatization of the water system of Los Angeles was largely a reaction to the high costs of maintaining and repairing the *zanjas* which, by the late 19th Century, had grown to encompass not merely ditches and channels but an arrangement of water wheels to lift the water to gravity flow irrigation systems, along with some 300 miles of water mains, reservoirs, infiltration galleries and pumping facilities.

While unofficially founded as a Dutch trading post in 1624, and centered for decades on Manhattan Island, early New York - like early Los Angeles - relied on domestic water supplies obtainable from sources in the immediate vicinity. Initially, these consisted of shallow, privately-owned wells. Under Dutch rule – a period of about forty years, sanitation and water quality were decidedly poor: accumulations of human and animal waste were common, contaminated runoff into holding ponds was frequent, and there was no concerted effort to regulate harmful activities impinging on locally-adjacent well-users (Koeppel, 2001). Thus, New York's initial efforts to develop a water supply system were largely animated by three concerns: accommodating population growth, averting communicable

disease, and achieving both objectives while saving money (Glaeser, 2011; 99).

as a commercial center for regional farming, ranching, and artisanal manufacturing.

vested with all of the rights to the water of the river (Hundley, 2001).

**4.2 New York – Early water development** 

activities - including trade with local native American tribes.

Under English rule (1664 and after), improvements were only marginal. Foul, standing water was common, and outbreaks of epidemics stemming from poor water quality including yellow fever and cholera – were not unknown (Koeppel, 2001). In 1677 the first general public-use well was dug near the fort at Bowling Green, while the first city reservoir was constructed on the east side of Broadway between Pearl and White Streets in 1776 about the time the city's population grew to over 20,000 residents. Initially, water pumped from wells near the Collect Pond, east of the reservoir, was distributed through hollow logs laid along main thoroughfares in Manhattan (New York City, 2011).

As the city's population grew, pollution of wells became a serious problem, as did periodic supply shortages due to drought. These tribulations led to more concerted efforts to supplement local supplies through cisterns and springs in upper Manhattan (an area less developed at this time). Following the outbreak of a Yellow Fever epidemic in the last decade of the 18th Century (1798), New York (along with Philadelphia, one of the country's largest cities), sought to provide a safer, more secure, and disease free water supply.

In 1800 the Manhattan Company (forerunner of Chase Manhattan Bank) sank a well at Reade and Centre Streets, pumped water into a reservoir on Chambers Street and distributed it through wooden mains to a portion of the community. This venture became, in effect, the city's first quasi-public water utility and was a major enhancement to the earlier Collect Pond (Willensky and White, 1988: 18). In 1830, in an effort to enhance emergency supplies, the city built a tank for fire protection at 13th and Broadway which was replenished from a well. Water was distributed through 30.48 cm (12-inch) cast iron pipes.

As in Los Angeles, these advanced efforts to provide a safe and secure supply were largely privately funded and managed (Koeppel, 2000). Led, ironically, by two New York statesmen who soon became mortal enemies - Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton - the city's Common Council was persuaded to obtain state legislative endorsement of the Manhattan Company's charter. Burr and Hamilton had different motives in advocating the charter and the company: the former sought financial profit through transforming the "surplus" revenues of the firm to his own design, while the latter was swayed by the desire to unburden city residents of a tax-supported public system (Glaeser, 2011: 99).

In any case, the result - as in Los Angeles - was to acquire sufficient revenue to enlarge and expand the water supply infrastructure of the city. Moreover, in both cities the motive of water security eventually led them to expand greater *public* control in order to construct massive aqueduct systems: a feat begun by New York in the 1840s and by Los Angeles in the early 1900s.
