Philadelphia Water Supply, Present and Proposed

The City of Philadelphia has an unusually interesting water plant. In point of capacity, it is one of the two or three largest plants in the world. For some twenty years it has been producing in the neighborhood of 300,000,000 gallons of water daily. During this interval the population has increased about 40 per cent and water waste has been reduced so as to maintain the supply, although the factor of safety was by no means adequate during much of the period. In 1899 an investigation was made for betterment of the then unfiltered and highly polluted water supply. A program for filter installation was begun in 1902 and since 1912 all of the water supply has been filtered.