Early drinking water in Schenectady
In 1897 groundwater replaced "abominable death-dealing water supply" from the Mohawk
Schenectady (New York), like many cities in the eastern United States, has had a long and complicated history of trying to ensure an ample supply of safe drinking water while also disposing of sewage. The proximity to the Mohawk River, and its early settlement, meant that Schenectady had some special challenges, and there were various notable developments along the way. A primary theme that emerges from this history is the eventual appreciation of the importance of the waterborne mode of enteric (intestinal) disease transmission.
Today Schenectady and many surrounding communities enjoy a reliable and abundant supply of drinking water from groundwater of the Great Flats Aquifer. Colonie and Cohoes, downriver, are among the few communities that still obtain drinking water from the Mohawk, which works out well until there is an event or crisis - such as a spill - that makes the water unusable.
Today, communities along the Mohawk treat their sewage, and the final treated effluent is discharged into the Mohawk in accordance with permits. This process is tightly regulated and our sewage treatment plants are excellent. But historically the relationship between drinking water supplies and sewage disposal has been problematic (and unregulated) and thus there are a few sad twists in this story.
There was a remarkable transformation of municipal water supplies during the latter half of the 19th century. This transformation occurred while cities along the Mohawk river grew as the Erie Canal became a major transportation artery. The transformation also occurred during a critical advance in the discipline of biology and the science of sanitary engineering. In the the latter half of the 19th century, the revolutionary idea of germ theory developed into our modern understanding that bacteria, parasites, and viruses are the root cause of a considerable number of enteric diseases.
Between about 1880 and 1900 there was an important change in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys in the understanding of bacteria and evaluation of water quality. During this time there was a transition from chemical assessment to biologic assessment of drinking water supplies. Chemical assessment of water was based on the occurrence of ammonia and nitrates and how they represent the chemical breakdown of sewage in a river. Biological assessment was based on the newly-discovered occurrence of bacteria in water, including fecal indicator bacteria.
If we focus on germ theory just as it applied to drinking water resources, we find that the real advance was understanding that there is a biological reason for impaired water: bacteria and other microorganisms that cause disease are present in sewage and can survive in surface water. It seems so obvious today, but back then it wasn’t. Prior to germ theory, the central idea of disease transmission was miasma - a idea based on the belief that noxious odors and fumes from sewage were the cause of disease (primarily gastrointestinal disease). This line of reasoning means that one could get sick just from breathing foul air. The miasma idea was incorrect, and many suffered as a result.
It is well known that the early connections between bacteria and impaired water occurred in the mid-19th century. One of the most famous cases of contaminated water was in London in 1854, during the third cholera epidemic. In this case, a high number of cholera cases were spatially mapped by physician John Snow. He correctly reasoned that sewage on the streets was inadvertently draining into public-use water wells. He convinced authorities to remove the pump handle of the offending well, and the epidemic quickly abated. The actions of John Snow and the story of the Broad Street outbreak are chronicled in a 2006 book by Steven Johnson titled “The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World.” To a certain extent the Broad Street case marks the beginning of the transition from miasma theory to germ theory. That transition would be slow, and we know that in Schenectady (and in both Albany and Troy) there were a few practicing physicians who still ascribed to miasma theory until at least 1891 (Craig, 1891).
Thus we see several significant changes occurred simultaneously. One is that the population of Schenectady grew due to the development of the Erie Canal, so the city needed a larger and more robust municipal water supply, for both drinking and fire suppression. Another is the scientific and medical transition to germ theory and the implications that germ theory had for municipal water supplies. So exactly at the time when Schenectady wrestled with the expansion of a new water supply, there was a lack of understanding of the harm that bacteria from sewage can do in a river. One manifestation of this issue is the clear disagreement in the literature between chemists and biologists: should we be using chemical or biological analysis to determine whether our municipal water may be impaired by sewage?
Timeline of the primary developments in the supply of drinking water for the City of Schenectady from about 1850 to 1930. See text for sources of primary events.
1. Springs, creeks, and shallow wells. The first phase of Schenectady’s drinking-water story involved water from springs, creeks, and shallow dug wells. The most sophisticated of these systems was a spring from Engine Hill (now, near Goodyear Tire and the Schenectady Fire Department). Spring water was fed into logs with 3-inch holes drilled into them that were connected by short sections of pipe (Rittner, 2006).
The Schenectady Water Company was incorporated in 1865, but apparently was unable to secure capital for construction (Howell and Munsell, 1886). In 1867 citizens voted down a plan to invest in a new water system proposed by the water commissioners. Then in 1869 Charles Stanford - an active politician in NY State - was elected president of the newly re-established Schenectady Water Company (SWC), and SWC ultimately developed a system to take water from the Mohawk River (Howell and Munsell, 1886). In the beginning, the switch was an improvement, as noted by G. Wise in “Edison’s decision”:
“Stanford's water plant, despite its many faults, was a definite improvement. To the extent it caused many inhabitants to switch to the then only lightly polluted river water from heavily polluted backyard wells it undoubtedly saved lives. Those backyard wells, often dangerously close to the underground privy vaults, were the city's main source of the germs causing typhoid and other diseases. However, as the river became more polluted, and as the Stanford water plant became increasingly inadequate, the city water question persisted.” (Wise, 2010).
Charles Stanford (1819-1885) was born in Watervliet (near the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers) and was one of eight children. Charles and several brothers went to California during the Gold Rush, and Charles then returned to NY and settled in Niskayuna in 1861. He was elected to the NY Assembly (1864-1865) and then to the NY Senate (1866-1869). [His younger brother was A. Leland Stanford (1824-1893), who founded Stanford University, was Governor of California (1862-63), and then served as a US Senator (1885-1893).] In 1885, Charles Stanford died, and apparently on his deathbed he transferred (sold) the water works to the city of Schenectady for $90k (Wise, 2010).
2. Mohawk River. The Schenectady water supply between 1871 and 1891 was from the Mohawk River. The water intake was at the end of Ferry Street, which was downriver from where much of the sewage ended up going into the river (see map below). The main creek that ran through the city was Cowhorn Creek, and it collected sewage along its path through the City (Cohn and Metzler, 1973). Cowhorn Creek merged with Mill Creek (also loaded with sewage), and together they flowed under the Erie Canal and into the Binnekill (at the time, the Binnekill was a low-volume channel of the Mohawk; today it is almost entirely filled in). The sewage became such a problem in the creek that much of the Cowhorn was actually covered (buried and in large-diameter pipes), but it was essentially a de facto sewage system for a large part of the city. What is remarkable about this situation is that when the City started taking drinking water from the Mohawk, the intake pipes were located just downriver of what was known to be the unofficial sewage outfall.
Sanborn Map of Schenectady in 1884. Sewage in the Binnekill was ultimately sourced from the sewage-polluted Cowhorn and Mill creeks that join the Mohawk a quarter-mile upstream from the intake pipes (Craig, 1891). Sanborn maps are used for fire insurance and property ownership, and the base map here is modified from original (available online at the US Library of Congress).
This new system that tapped the Mohawk River was completed in 1871 and operational by 1872. This system was a major improvement for fire suppression. The intake was situated at the end of Ferry Street and the Holly system (direct pressure) was used for pumping and distribution. Water was taken from a 114 x 6 ft “cistern” adjacent to the River and a feeder pipe that extended into the river - this was river water with a crude filter system (Howell and Munsell, 1886).
At the time there was an idea of the natural purification of river water. This idea held that rivers could naturally purify themselves if there was sufficient flow and agitation to cause the oxidation and degradation of sewage within the river. Therefore, in theory, if cities and towns were spaced far enough apart along the river there would be no problem: self-cleansing would occur in the interval between cities and towns. In this scenario, cities could take drinking water from the river and then dump sewage on the downstream side of the intake. I am uncertain of the line of reasoning that Charles Stanford and colleagues used when they decided instead to place the intake for drinking water downstream from the sewage outfall. Perhaps the thinking was that the sewage would be diluted or purified in that short distance (¼ mile) between the Binnekill and North Ferry Street. Perhaps the problem never crossed their minds.
Either way, the decision to place the water-supply intake downstream from the sewage outfall was a disaster. Don Rittner, a historian of Schenectady, summed up the new system aptly: “Stanford’s water supply was ample but also carried typhoid germs and death to every section of Schenectady” (Rittner, 2006). The poor planning resulted in considerable transmission of disease, and this drinking-water disaster culminated in the 1890-91 typhoid epidemic.
Typhoid epidemic. The 1890-91 epidemic is described in the history books as an epidemic of typhoid fever, a waterborne disease caused by bacteria. But the epidemic was broader and included other enteric disease, and the outbreak was so severe and so widespread that it called attention to the severity of sewage pollution in the Mohawk, and change followed quickly.
Analysis of typhoid cases in cities along the Mohawk and Hudson indicated that the primary source of the epidemic was untreated water from the Mohawk River and tainted well water in Schenectady (Craig, 1891). Schenectady was the “Fountain and origin of the epidemic,” which included typhoid and also the severe, chronic, and “rebellious” intestinal distress referred to at the time as “Schenectady Type” diarrhea (Craig, 1891). While Schenectady has a number of advertised claims to fame, “Schenectady-type diarrhea” is not one of them. In his analysis, Craig noted that virtually all of the cases of typhoid fever and of Schenectady-type diarrhea in the region could be tied to Schenectady.
The occurrence of typhoid fever in Schenectady was so dramatic that it was a major hot spot of infection in the US, with infection rates between 300 and 400 per 100,000 (Fuertes, 1897; Wise, 2010). The epidemic of enteric disease focused considerable attention on the pollution in the Mohawk, which had been clearly linked to drinking water impaired by sewage, and on ways to address the pollution. I recently wrote about the recognition of transmission of pathogens progressively down the Mohawk and then into the Hudson River between 1880 and 1891.
Analysis of bacteria in Mohawk River water. The outbreak led to what was almost the first systematic measurements of fecal bacteria along the Mohawk – enabled in part due to the rapid growth in the field of bacteriology. In 1891, systematic studies of bacteria in water of the Mohawk were conducted by Dr. T. Smith, Prof. C.C. Brown, and then later Prof. Prosser (all at Union College). These measurements of total and fecal bacteria were made along the length of the Mohawk, but there was a high density of measurements made in the Schenectady area, undoubtedly due to the epidemic (Leighton 1902, p. 53).
This research was conducted and led by Dr. Theobald Smith (then the Director of the Pathological Laboratory of the Massachusetts State Board of Health), who received a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1883 at the Albany Medical College (Sexton, 1951). Dr. T. Smith was a pioneer in developing culturing techniques to quantifying bacteria loads in natural surface waters. His studies in the Mohawk, which were the first studies that quantified bacteria loads along the River, showed that bacterial analyses, rather than chemical analyses, were preferable in determining the “sanitary condition of river water-supplies” (Smart et al., 1893). This work also showed that the River was contaminated with sewage from Utica to Schenectady.
This research apparently carried on for a few years. In 1893, the Union College newspaper, the Concordiensis, reported that Professors Stollar and Brown were doing research to determine how far polluted water travelled down the Mohawk from Schenectady (Concordiensis, 1893, p. 12).
The development of bacterial testing in rivers was a dramatic change from the traditional approach of using chemical analyses to determine water quality. The water supply of Albany was evaluated by Charles F. Chandler in 1885 (Chandler, 1885). He advocated the widely-used approach of evaluating free ammonia, albuminoid ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites to determine the extent of contamination and “natural purification” of rivers. In his analysis he noted that the albuminoids (albuminoid ammonia) in the Hudson were lower in Albany compared to Troy. He noted that “This [finding] is entirely in keeping with the theory of spontaneous purification. Running streams may receive moderate quantities of organic matter and lose the same by chemical changes which take place in the water.”
Thus C.F. Chandler was clearly an advocate of chemical analyses rather than biological analyses for the assessment of drinking water supplies. In 1885, the “biological technique” (analysis of bacteria) was new and evolving rapidly, but the chemical approach was well-established. Chandler’s comments leave little doubt what he thought of analysis of bacteria and the potential for harmful bacteria to impair drinking-water supplies from rivers (and his apparent distain for biology and “microscopists”):
“Under these circumstances it would appear that counting the number of bacteria ... is not a very reliable method for determining the danger of water for domestic purposes, although some enthusiastic microscopists, carried away by their skill in raising bacteria in their microscopic gardens, have said that the days of chemical analysis of water supplies are numbered.
Up to the present time, however, biological analysis will not tell us anything with regard to the Hudson River water that we do not already know. Nothing in the discoveries of these great investigators enables us to say that this water is unsafe. It is believed that typhoid fever and diarrhæal diseases have often been disseminated by polluted wells, but no cases of these diseases have ever been traced to the waters of a large river. (Chandler, 1885, p. 25).
These comments didn’t age well because within several years all major cities near the confluence of the Mohawk and the Hudson rivers were plunged into the typhoid epidemic that was clearly tied to contaminated river water, and bacterial analysis became the new standard for the evaluation of water quality in rivers.
3. Groundwater. The epidemic ignited a search for a new source of drinking water for the city. Late in 1891, George Ingersoll, informally known as the “Father of Water” in Schenectady, started drilling exploratory wells for groundwater. Ingersoll apparently first encountered plentiful water in a well in sediments of the Mohawk floodplain (Rittner, 2006, Wise, 2010). The switch in 1897 to groundwater from the Great Flats aquifer as the City’s water supply made a major difference in the transmission of enteric disease. By 1899, the sharp drop in typhoid cases could be attributed to this new source of clean water (Mann, 1907).
The switch to groundwater in 1897 was a major accomplishment of George Ingersoll and a huge advance for the city. In his 1901 report, however, Ingersoll was concerned by the wasteful use of this newly-discovered bountiful - and precious - resource. In that report he wrote about the irony of wasting high-quality drinking water given the grim past:
“....a community has for years been cursed with such an abominable death-dealing water supply as that of the city of Schenectady was up to the year 1894, 1 cannot understand why, after being given the best and purest water supply in the State of New York, and I think I am safe in saying in the United States, they should deliberately and willfully waste the water as has been done the past year.” (Ingersoll, 1901).
The final step was chlorination, but this would not occur until c. 1930. Today the city chlorinates groundwater from the Great Flats Aquifer, which is one of the most remarkable sources of municipal water in Upstate NY.
This and other Notes from a Watershed are available at: https://mohawk.substack.com/
Further Reading
Cohn, MM, and Metzler, DW, 1973. The pollution fighters: a history of Environmental Engineering in NY State. NY Department of Health. 245 p.
Concordiensis (no apparent author), Sept 1893.
Craig, J.D., 1891. Epidemic intestinal diseases in Albany and vicinity. The Sanitatian. Sep 1, 1891; 262;
Featherstonhaugh, J.D., 1899. Albany’s water supply and that or her neighbors. The Sanitarian (359), p.318.
Fuertes, J.H., 1897. Water and public health: The relative purity of waters from different sources. J. Wiley & sons
Howell, G.R., and Munsell, J.H., 1886 "Schenectady Water-Works." from History of the County of Schenectady, N.Y., from 1662 to 1886. WW Munsell Publishers.
Ingersoll, G. 1901. Waste of water in Schenectady. Annual report. Digitized and available here.
Leighton, MO, 1902. Sewage Pollution in the Metropolitan area near New York City and its effect on inland water resources. USGS, Water-supply and Irrigation paper n. 72, Series L, Quality of Water. 75 p.
Mann, FJ, 1907. Typhoid fever in the Hudson River Valley. Albany Medical Annals, April 1907. V XXVIII, p. 345-354.
Rittner, D., 2006. Remains of Schenectady’s first municipal water supply found. In Schenectady County Historical Society Newsletter, v. 49, n. 9-10. Sept-Oct 2006.
Sanborn Map of Schenectady in 1884. Sanborn Map, Library of Congress (link here).
Sexton, AM, 1951. Theobald Smith: first chairman of the Laboratory Section, 1900. Am J Public Health Nations Health May;41 (5 Pt 2):125-31. doi: 10.2105/ajph.41.5_pt_2.125.
Smart, C., Vaughan, VC., Perkins, M., Morales, JD, and Ramirez, J, 1893. Report of the Committee on the Pollution of Water-Supplies. Public health papers and reports, 19, p.191.
Summers, W.C., 2009. History of Microbiology, In Editor(s): Thomas M. Schmidt, Encyclopedia of Microbiology (Fourth Edition), Academic Press, Pages 593-607, ISBN 9780128117378
Quammen, D. 2006. A Drink of Death. NY times. Review of Stevn Johnson’s book “Ghost Map” that details the 1884 Cholera outbreak in London. 12 Nov 2006. Review is here.
Vanderslott, S, Phillips, MT., Pitzer, VE, Kirchhelle, C, 2019. Water and Filth: Reevaluating the First Era of Sanitary Typhoid Intervention (1840–1940), Clinical Infectious Diseases, v. 69, Issue Supplement_5, 1 Nov. 2019, p. S377–S384,
Wise, G. 2010. Edison’s Decision (ePub available from the Schenectady Historical Society here).