Excerpt from Report by the Commission Appointed to Investigate the Subject of the Annexation of Certain Neighboring Cities and Towns to the City of Boston

Muddy River district, not including the area of the low district east of the Brookline station, is acres.

The Charles River basin is too large for its outlet, at the present time, and this difficulty will increase instead of diminish if any further encroachments are permitted by increasing the width or number of the bridges between Boston and Cambridge and Charlestown, and the force and velocity of the currents in the tidal basin, already too small, will be still further reduced with a corresponding increase of deposits. This basin not only receives a large proportion of the sewage of Boston and Cambridge, but also the sewage of Brighton, Watertown, Newton and Waltham. The sewage of these towns is not very large, as they have no system of public water supply; but the introduction of water will be accompanied with systems of sewerage by which the amount will be greatly increased. The natural source of supply for these towns is the Charles River; and, as it is evident that a considerable amount of its water will first be contaminated by use, and then returned to the river as far below the towns as possible, the effect will be to increase the objectionable accumulations in the basin. There are several plans by which such a nuisance could be abated, - one is the construction of a marginal sewer to intercept the sewage and convey it to a point where it will be dissipated at once by the action of the tidal currents; another to remove the accumulations by dredging; either of these plans would be exceedingly expensive. The size of the basin might be reduced to such an extent as only to leave a channel through which the current would run with such velocity that there could be no deposits. As the several commissions on Boston Harbor have advanced the theory that preservation of this basin intact is necessary for the protection of the inner harbor from shoaling, and its capacity should be increased rather than diminished, this plan is not feasible. Under these circumstances, the manner in which the sewage of districts under consideration can be conveyed to some less objectionable place than the Charles River basin' becomes of the greatest importance.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.