Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 128, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1913 — LONGEST AQUEDUCT IN THE WORLD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LONGEST AQUEDUCT IN THE WORLD

ONE of the largest, and in many respects the most wonderful, waterworks system in the world will be completed and placed in operation in the course of this month by the City of Los Angeles, Cal. The Aqueduct, with its system of five storage reservoirs, is 235 miles in length, and is designed to carry a daily supply of 258,000,000 gallons from the Sierra Nevada mountains southward across the great Mojave desert, under the Sierra Madre range and into the San Fernando valley, twenty-five miles northwest of the city. From here the water %eeded for domestic consumption will be carried in a six-foot steel pipe intp the city’s present distribution mains. The system comprises the longest aqueduct in the world. The project was inaugurated in 1905, and since 1908 an army of 5,000 men have been steadily employed night and day in its construction. On the desolate and sun-scorched desert the summer temperatures have ranged as high as 120 degrees F. In fact, one of the great problems has been to provide the men and animals with food and water and proper accommodations to withstand the climatic conditions. Of Various Forms. The Los Angeles Aqueduct, as It is called, is of various forms and designs. The first twenty-two miles Is unilned open canal, the following thirty-eight miles is an open ditch, and the remainder is in covered concrete conduit, tunnels, and concrete and riveted steel siphons, the latter being used to carry the water across deep canyons, or valleys. More than fiftythree miles of the aqueduct is composed of tunnels driven through solid granite, the longest being the Elizabeth tunnel, under the Sierra Madre mountains, with a length of five miles. The system of four storage reservoirs provides for the impounding of fifty billion- gallons, which, at the rate of the city’s present daily consumption, would be sufficient to supply the municipality for three years. Much of the work has been done from five to thirty-five miles from any railroad. Preliminary to the construction of the aqueduct it was necessary to build 390 miles of roads and trails, four water systems with 190 miles of mains, three hydro-electric power plants, a telephone Bystem 350 miles long, a standard gauge steam railroad 120 miles into the Mojave desert, and a cement mill costing $875,000. With the exception of one small contract for nine miles of conduits and tunnels, the entire work has been done by the city. The system is a gravity one throughout, the intake being at an elevation of 3,812 feet above and the elevation of Los Angeles being on an average only 276 feet The cost of the work has been $20,000,000, exclusive of any power development By impounding the flow of the aqueduct at its outlet during the rainy season it will be possible to deliver more than 300,000,000 gallons dally during the dry season—April 15 to October 16 —in which no rain falls. This is much more than sufficient to meet the daily requirements of the City of London. As the City of Los Angeles has a present population of only 400,000, and requires but 50,000,000 gallons daily, the surplus aqueduct flow for a long period of years will be devoted to the irrigation of 135,000 acres of orange and lemon lands adjacent to the city. Chief Features. One of the chief features of the enterprise is in the generation of hydro-electric energy. There is a fall of 1,500 feet in the aqueduct fortyseven miles from the city, with the possibility of developing 120,000,000 horse-power. Of this amount, 37,500 horse-power are now being developed at a cost of $3,360,000. The powerhouses will be ready for operation within several months after the aqueduct is placed in operation, and their output will be devoted to lighting the city’s streets and boulevards. The designer and constructor of this great work, which |n point of magnitude ranks as the third largest hydraulic work under way in the western hemisphere, is the City's Water Engineer, Mr. William Hulholland. The acoompanying picture gives a

good idea of the formidable nature of the enterprise, and the immense scale on which the work has been carried out It shows how the huge pipe has . been carried down one side of the arid Jawbone canyon, across the bottom of the valley and high up on the opposite side to the point where it dives below the surface of the soil, arifi is continued underground. The Jawbone siphon alone is 8,000 feet in length—or over one and a half miles—measures from seven feet six inches to ten feet in diameter, and has a total weight of 3,300 tons. The picture is taken looking north, from the south rim of the canyon and 800 feet above the valley floor, and between the bottom of the canyon and the point on its side where the pipe plunges underground the difference in level is 850 feet At the lowest point the water pressure is enormous —360 pounds to the square inch, which is equivalent to twenty-four atmospheres —and to resist- this internal pressure on the pipe the steel here is one and one-quarter inches in thickness, the rivets used in fastening the sections together being seven inches long.