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A Proposed Sewer System for San Francisco, 1875 The Problem On the 8th of November, 1875, the Board of Supervisors signed a contract with Wm. P. Humphries, Esq., the City and County Surveyor for $10,000 to prepare a report on the City's Sewer System. On the 22nd of May, 1876, the Humphries report was filed. Here are excerpts in his words: The existing sewers of the city have been built without regard to a system of any kind which looks to the general drainage of the city. Each sewer appears to have been built independently of all others, and without regard to the duty it has to perform. Most of the streets in the older portion of the city have brick sewers, which extend up the hillsides to irregular distances. When these sewers approach the lower portions of the city, the sewers are of wood and are generally level, or nearly level. Being down, or nearly down to low water, the tide rises and falls in them, so checking their outfall that most of them are nothing more than elongated cess-pools, badly choked with offensive sewage matter. This evil must go on increasing from year to year, until some change is effected and some remedy applied. The Bay of San Francisco being of great size, with strong tidal currents, affords great facilities for getting rid of the sewage matter of the city; but to make it available, the sewers must be carried out to points where there are strong currents. Along the busy waterfront some of the sewers do not extend out into the bay, but stop short, terminating inside of the rubble stone bulkhead, where the offensive solid matter is deposited, rendering the slips between the wharves at times offensive to the last degree of endurance. Whenever sewers are not self-cleansing men and boys are sent into the sewers to remove the deposits from them in buckets through man-holes in the middle of the streets. This vile practice still obtains in this city, but with proper construction of sewers this disgusting operation will come to an end. Sewer Cleaning Update The
sediment and heavy substance accumulating in the bottom of the
sewers, impervious to flushing, is removed by process of windlassing at the
manholes and transporting to the dumps. The Humphries report ran 28 pages. He proposed changing the grade of sewers, pumping stations and the use of better bricks. |