Abstract
AN extremely valuable and interesting report1 has been issued by the sanitary authorities of the City of Chicago on the results of the chemical and bacteriological examinations of the waters between Lake Michigan at Chicago and the Mississippi River at St. Louis for the purpose of determining their condition and quality before and after the opening of the Sanitary Canal. For the diversion from Lake Michigan of the sewage of Chicago and its inoffensive disposal towards the Mexican Gulf, a canal was cut to carry the sewage, much diluted with lake water, into the Illinois River, a distance of 29 miles. From this point the Illinois River, after a course of 289 miles, discharges into the Mississippi at Grafton, which is about 38 miles above St. Louis. The investigations originated from the fact that the State of Missouri and the City of St. Louis had applied for a Federal injunction against the further operation and development of the Sanitary Canal of the Chicago Sanitary District on the ground that the purity of the water supply of St. Louis was endangered thereby. Chicago replied by instituting a commission to examine into the condition of the waters between Chicago and St. Louis, a distance of 356 miles.
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HEWLETT, R. The Sanitary Examination of Water Supplies . Nature 68, 420 (1903). https://doi.org/10.1038/068420a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/068420a0