Excerpt from Evidence and Arguments on Petitions of Cambridge and Boston, for Leave to Take Water From Shawsheen River, Before Committee on Public Health of the Massachusetts Legislature: J. W. Hammond, J. L. Stackpole, for Petitioners; Geo. A. Torrey, R. M. Morse, Jr., Geo. H. Poor, E. G. Loomis, Charles Cowley, for Remonstrants

I appear here in behalf of the petitioners, prepared to show you our absolute necessities in this matter, for I think before the hearing closes you will come to the conclusion that it is a matter of necessity with our city; and while I do not desire to take up the time of the committee, yet perhaps a few words, showing you what we want, and why we want it, may shorten the hearing.

I regret to say that the city engineer came in here without his plan, and I am obliged to rely upon a plan, which, while substantially like that which we have, is not quite so large, and was not made for the purposes of this hearing, although it was made for a purpose which was near enough to the purpose of this hearing to make it of use here.

We desire authority to take water from the Shawsheen river, in quantity not exceeding gallons a day, and carry that water by pipes to the City of Cambridge, there to be used by the inhabitants for domestic and other purposes.

We desire to take this water where the Shawsheen river crosses the old Middlesex canal, and to lay the pipe along the Middlesex canal until we come near the Mystic pond, and there branch over from the Mystic pond, through Arlington and part of Belmont, to Fresh pond in Cambridge. It is a distance of somewhere about 13 miles. For the purpose of gathering the water we desire to build a dam at the point where we take the water across the river, which would be from to feet long, the exact figures I do not' pretend to give, but only approximately; also to make storage basins above that dam, taking perhaps 800 acres of land for that purpose.

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