New Reservoir for Providence

New Reservoir for Providence

The Water Supply Board of Providence, R. I., has awarded two contracts for work in Scituate where the city’s new reservoir will be located, and it is expected that this work, which is largely preliminary to the construction of the $3,000,000 dam and spillway, will be completed by October 1. About five additional miles of dirt roadway will be built at an average cost of about $15,000 per mile, and considerable excavation will have to be done on the river diversion project at Kent. The storage reservoir has been completed at comparatively trifling cost, and about 430.000,000 gallons of water for emergency use is being impounded. This reservoir is just beyond the village of North Scituate, and it has submerged about one-third of a square mile of desolate country and converted it into a picturesque lake, studded with islets. The big reservoir will have a capacity of fully 15 times the storage reservoir’s holding. The storage reservoir is nearly two miles long and about miles wide, and necessitated raising of the Hartford pike, formerly several feet below the mean elevation of water in the reservoir. It is expected that the lowest yield of water will be approximately 85,000,000 gallons a day, or about four times the city’s present consumption. The ultimate cost of the reservoir will hardly fall short of $20,000,000, as scores of suits are yet to be settled over land and business damages upon which the board and the people whose property has been taken by condemnation proceedings could not agree. Several of these claims run into the millions, and most of the suits that have been tried have resulted in compromise verdicts, larger than the city had offered, but smaller than the plantiffs claimed.

The Water Supply Board of Providence, R. I., has awarded two contracts for work in Scituate where the city’s new reservoir will be located, and it is expected that this work, which is largely preliminary to the construction of the $3,000,000 dam and spillway, will be completed by October 1. About five additional miles of dirt roadway will be built at an average cost of about $15,000 per mile, and considerable excavation will have to be done on the river diversion project at Kent. The storage reservoir has been completed at comparatively trifling cost, and about 430.000,000 gallons of water for emergency use is being impounded. This reservoir is just beyond the village of North Scituate, and it has submerged about one-third of a square mile of desolate country and converted it into a picturesque lake, studded with islets. The big reservoir will have a capacity of fully 15 times the storage reservoir’s holding. The storage reservoir is nearly two miles long and about miles wide, and necessitated raising of the Hartford pike, formerly several feet below the mean elevation of water in the reservoir. It is expected that the lowest yield of water will be approximately 85,000,000 gallons a day, or about four times the city’s present consumption. The ultimate cost of the reservoir will hardly fall short of $20,000,000, as scores of suits are yet to be settled over land and business damages upon which the board and the people whose property has been taken by condemnation proceedings could not agree. Several of these claims run into the millions, and most of the suits that have been tried have resulted in compromise verdicts, larger than the city had offered, but smaller than the plantiffs claimed.