[Illustration]
W. W. ASHE
U. S. FOREST SERVICE
Three rivers determined the location of Pittsburgh. They have been
important factors in creating its industrial position; they are now
important agents affecting the health and earnings of thousands of its
citizens. The two score of iron and coal towns which are known as the
Pittsburgh District, fringe the banks of these rivers. Mine, factory
and furnace alternate with the residence settlements of the laborers,
and they and the railroads compete with the streams themselves for
ownership of the narrow strip of land between low water and flood
crest. With every recession of the floods, man crowds the streams, only
to be driven back when they reassert their suzerainty. Whatever can be
done therefore, to tame their caprices, to equalize their flow, either
by lowering the flood crests or increasing the low water stages, adds
to the well-being and prosperity of men who work at forge and furnace,
or go with the barges,--men whose living is from day to day, and to
whom the idle day brings want.
The flood is the open expression of the rivers' authority. But they
have another and more subtle influence. It is less direct, but it has
a wider relation to the well being of the city, not only affecting
the laborer who lives on the lowlands, but affecting all citizens
alike. The rivers and their tributaries near which Pittsburgh and the
surrounding towns are situated, furnish these in most instances with
their water supply. The character of this water affects the health of
the users, and their working efficiency.
All the drinking water used in the Pittsburgh District, except that
from artesian wells or similar primarily pure sources, has been
contaminated by the sewage of towns and villages higher up the rivers.
Through such contaminated water typhoid fever and other zymotic
intestinal diseases are widely disseminated. Scarcely a town in the
steel and coal district has not been devastated by an outbreak of this
dread scourge. The condition of Wilkinsburg is typical, its water
supply being contaminated by the sewage of more than twenty towns. The
new filtration plant for Greater Pittsburgh delivers to most of the
city a drink much superior in quality to the highly polluted waters
generally used. But filtration is only a first step toward purity, and
toward decreasing typhoid fever and the other water-borne diseases.
Filtration removes a high percentage of the pathogenic bacteria by
which these diseases are transmitted; but a highly contaminated
water, such as that of the Allegheny River, purified even by the best
methods of sand filtration, is not pure water. Intelligent users must
at length realize this and demand for their own health not a purified
water merely, but a primarily pure supply, safeguarded by sedimentation
and filtration against occasional contamination. Within easy reach of
Pittsburgh and nearly every one of its satellite towns, lie abundant
sources of primarily pure supply, in the forest-protected mountain
streams.
Hitherto the cost of purchasing a forested watershed and holding it as
unproductive property has deterred cities from seeking such sources.
That difficulty no longer exists. Forest lands have now a recognized
and constantly increasing earning power. If a watershed is purchased
at a reasonable price and is well managed, it will become, as stumpage
further appreciates in worth, a valuable municipal asset. Or if a town
is small and unwilling to assume the responsibility of such management;
it can well co-operate with the state in developing a system which will
secure to it pure water, and at the same time preserve to the state the
earning power of its forests which are among its most valuable natural
resources.
Domestic water supply, however, is largely a matter local to each town
or each group of towns. But the wage earners of the whole Pittsburgh
section are yearly vitally affected by the rivers in a different way.
The earnings and even the lives of thousands, especially of those
living in the low districts of the larger cities, are threatened by
the winter and spring floods. These floods frequently result in losses
to wage earners aggregating several million dollars a year. In the
flood of March, 1907, it is estimated that more than 2,000 families
in the river districts of Pittsburgh, and an equal number in the low
lying sections of nearby cities, were forced from their homes or their
stores by high water. Quantities of personal effects were injured or
destroyed; lives were lost; and much suffering followed the winter
exposure. The effect of the flood in increasing certain kinds of
disease is shown by a comparison of the pneumonia and typhoid records
in the flooded wards of Pittsburgh. Dr. Beaty of the Pittsburgh Bureau
of Health gives us the number of cases of these two diseases in certain
wards on the North Side, which are largely tenanted by laborers, and
were partly inundated.
In March and April, 1906, when there was no flood, there were fourteen
cases of pneumonia and forty-eight of typhoid fever.
In March and April, 1907, when the flood had a height of thirty-six
feet, there were forty cases of pneumonia and 118 cases of typhoid
fever, more than twice the number of the preceding year.
During the flood the water and dwellings in these districts became
badly contaminated by human waste, since the flooding of toilets and
sewers prevented their use. At the same time many families usually
dependent upon street hydrants for domestic water had to make use
of this extremely impure river water. This affected large numbers
of people, many of them recently arrived foreigners unacquainted
with methods of securing ready relief. But a more general suffering
was occasioned by the loss in wages through the closing of large
establishments whose plants were flooded. It was estimated at the
time by one of the local newspapers that more than 100,000 people in
the Pittsburgh District were idle for an average period of a week on
account of the March flood of 1907. A typical example is the National
Tube Works, where different departments were closed from ten to
fourteen days, throwing about 10,000 men out of regular work. About
4,000 of these were employed for three days as laborers, cleaning up
after the water subsided. The same thing is yearly repeated in many
other large factories as well as on the railroads. It is no exceptional
occurrence. A similar, though less severe flood occurred two months
earlier the same year and another in March, 1908. It is indeed an
exceptional spring when there is not a flood. The losses to laborers by
curtailment of wages from this cause are seldom so excessive as they
were in the flood of March, 1907, but they amount annually to more
than $100,000. Moreover, this loss takes place in the winter, when the
wage earner can least afford it.
[Illustration: DENUDED LAND DEVOID OF HUMUS, ON THE MOUNTAINS; LARGELY
RESPONSIBLE FOR FLOODS ON THE MONONGAHELA RIVER.]
[Illustration: RAILROAD BRIDGE DESTROYED BY FRESHET. THREE MEN WERE
KILLED IN THE WRECK WHICH FOLLOWED.]
[Illustration: FARMING LAND DESTROYED BY FLOODS. MONONGAHELA RIVER.]
[Illustration: WAGE-EARNERS' HOMES ABANDONED ON ACCOUNT OF FRESHET.]
The river floods cannot be prevented by local effort. Their damage is
by no means confined to Pittsburgh; it extends the entire course of the
Ohio River and its most important tributaries; its causes originate
in other states besides Pennsylvania. Although the state and even the
cities might well co-operate in certain ways, the prevention of these
floods is a problem for the Federal government to consider.
The cause of a flood lies partly in natural conditions. The run-off
of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers is naturally concentrated and
the highest floods occur when a deep snow on a frozen soil is suddenly
melted by heavy warm rain. But their height has been accentuated by
human agency; and this points to the two necessary phases of river
flood control work. One is the re-establishment of normal forest
conditions. This means not so much a great extension of the forest
area, although there are many steep slopes now cleared which should be
re-wooded; but it means the restocking as densely as possible of lands
which have been cut or badly burned and are thinly or partially wooded.
This is a means to an end. The forest produces a deep mat of leaves
and mould, the humus which not only has a high water storage capacity
itself but determines largely the porousness and absorptive power of
the underlying soil. This function of the forest is not incompatible
with the use of its timber. The most rapid growth of timber is secured
by maintaining the deepest humus; but the cutting of it must be
adjusted under skilled direction in order not to jeopardize the water
storage function of the soil.
Furthermore, there is need of more evergreen forests. The pine and
hemlock have been largely removed from the mountain sources of
the Ohio. But these trees prolong the melting of deep snows, even
under warm rains, for several days longer than deciduous trees. The
re-establishment of forests of conifers will therefore contribute to
lowering the crests of floods by distributing the flow over five or six
days instead of two or three. This is one phase of the work of river
control.
[Illustration: FEDERAL STREET DURING FLOOD OF MARCH 14, 1907.]
On account, however, of the large areas of open farm-land that lie on
the watershed of the Ohio and that cannot be reforested, additional
means are necessary for storing the surplus storm water. There should
be storage reservoirs such as are now being used at the head of the
Mississippi River for regulating the flow of the river above St. Paul.
These reservoirs must be on wooded watersheds; otherwise they will
silt up and they will hold back some of the storm water and lower the
height of floods, they will have an additional value for they can be
used as reservoirs for domestic water supply. They can also be made to
increase the dry season flow of the streams, thus furnishing a stable
water power for industrial use and permitting steady navigation during
summer and autumn when the water stage is frequently too low even for
coal barges. Thus, by means of the forests will be secured not only a
reduction in floods but also a greater earning capacity to the region
through the development of the latent power of its streams.
The rivers, then, are at once the making and the menace of Pittsburgh.
It is through the forests and by reservoirs that the menace can be
removed and the highest utility of the streams established. The purity
of the water for drinking purposes can thus be assured. This involves
a betterment in the health of the community and an increase in the
efficiency of the laborer. The equalization of the river flow can also
be thus attained. And this involves, first, the lessening of flood
losses, and, second, the increasing of the power of the streams to meet
the exacting requirements of water power development. The lowering of
the floods secures also a further betterment in health by improving
the sanitary condition of the districts subject to inundations, and
a betterment of economic conditions, both by giving the laborer more
steady work during flood and low flow periods, and by opening to him,
through the creation of new industries, a wider field of employment.
[Illustration: A MILE OF WATER ON PENN AVENUE DURING PITTSBURGH'S
RECORD FLOOD, MARCH, 1907.]