Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/669

 IMSTOKY OF G00DH1 E COUNT'S 58-J and a St. Paul newspaper for proposals for doing the work, in accordance with the plans and specifications. Some half dozen or more proposals were received in due time. The contract was awarded Augusl 28, L883, to the Northwestern Water and Gas Supply Company, of Minneapolis, Minn., it being the lowest re- sponsible bidder, for the sum of * s <».400. The pump liou.se is of stone, facing Levee street, at the foot of Hill street. 40 b 52 feet, divided into a pump room and a boiler room, and a brick coal shed adjoining. The water is taken from the main channel of the .Mississippi river, through a four- teen-inch east iron intake pipe, extending 800 feel from the pump house across the bay. The water is conveyed by gravity into a screen well, where it is cleared of leaves, .-hips, small fish and other impurities; thence it is conveyed through an arch from the bottom of the tiller well to an adjoining pump well; thence it is pumped into the street mains, and forced into a 1,000,000 gallon reservoir located on Sorin bluff, at an elevation of 27.1 feet above the river. By the original contract the reservoir was to be built by tunneling into the side of Sorin bluff, but after digging and experimenting for some time, expending a consider- able sum of money, and laying down two blocks of pipe on Fifth and Bluff streets, and the fourteen-inch pipe from the foot of the bluff to the mouth of the tunned, which they had excavated, the contractors made a proposition to the committee, that they would build a 1 ,000,000. gallon reservoir on top of the ground, and cover it with a good substantial roof, on such site as the city might select on the point of Sorin bluff, and remove and relay the pipe already laid, so far as to conform to the new location, without any additional expense to the city. Accordingly, by the mutual agreement of both parties, a new plan and specifications were prepared and adopted for the reservoir, and the original contract was so far modified as to conform to the new arrangement. For the new site of the reservoir, the city purchased three acres of land, and the right of way thereto, for the sum of $400, on which the reservoir now stands. It is constructed circular and is eighty feet in diameter, and averages twenty-seven feet in depth. It is covered with a conical roof, consisting of a very strong and sub- stantial timber truss, supported in the center by a stone pier, and is covered by shingles laid on light board sheeting. Plans are now under way for furnishing the city with water from an artesian Avell sunk seventy-five feet east of the pumping station from which a flow was obtained, July 2, 1909. A contract was let in the fall of 1909 for a reservoir with a capacity of some three-quarters of a million gallons.