OCR Text |
Show I l l THE WATER QUESTION. I All at once the water is turned off in a way to j I 'J destroy the foliage and the lawns, to fill the j I ,, streets with flying dust, to destroy furniture and I i f to fill the city with sick children. Was it i 1 done in malice to reconcile the peo- pie to stand all the steals which lie in coil under i' the project of bringing in Cottonwood with its j 'I i manifold grafts? It looks so, because if the au- j J j; thorities are competent to have charge of a city, j I j( they must have known for weeks the coming j I jl danger, and by this time the surplus water of the i I j I city canal and the 5,000,000 gallons which the ar- ; tesian wells above Liberty park provide would j h I : have been supplying the sprinklers and the im- S j H fj mense volume of water needed daily at the depots, i ! fl u Some years ago a pumping and hoisting plant J H was set up in Emigration canyon. Whether that ' I ' is still there or not we do not know, but a little i . I hoist set up there at a cost of $3,000 could, in i three days, be supplying water enough to sprinkle I the streets. Everybody is crying out about the j I water famine, and as they watch the destruction 11;: of lawns and shrubbery, they have full informa- II fj tion of the fact that quite 10,000,000 gallons are j jl jj running to waste through the city. In the mean time, the Jordan in full volume is flowing past the city. For years the authorities have been besought to throw that water up into the city for use in sprinkling; for years they have been besought to turn the artesian water into the mains and thus relieve the waters from the canyons can-yons of one-third the drain upon them; it has been shown that Liberty park water is eighteen feet above the joint building grounds and sixty feet above the depots. The result is a famine and the scurvy billingsgate billings-gate of a dirty sheet that has been published here for nearly half a century and which has never yet recommended an improvement that had not a steal somewhere concealed within it. This, too, when 10,000,000 gallons of water are running to waste daily. As it is, we call upon the mayor, council and city engineer to have the sprinklers running on water which is now going to waste, and to have it done within three days. If no one in the city government can do it, there are plenty outside that government who can. The present is an unnecessary famine, and it would never have come under the control of men competent com-petent to handle the city's affairs. |