Building New York's Sewers: Developing Mechanisms of Urban Management (review)

Joanne Abel Goldman asks an important question: How did the public perception of municipal services as a public responsibility replace the older belief that these services were a private concern? She finds her answers in the history of sewers in nineteenth-century New York.

In the early nineteenth century, the supply of water and disposal of waste were private problems. New Yorkers got their water from wells and cisterns and disposed of waste in an entrepreneurial manner. The city government did little to regulate waste disposal, only acting to protect public health when disease threatened. Political power was decentralized at the ward level. Sewers were built in response to petition and paid for by local property owners. As a result, there was no plan for the construction of sewers. The wealthy paid for their own sewers, while the poor had open trenches.

In the 1830s, the threat of disease and fire created a demand for a new water supply. This led to the construction of an aqueduct from Westchester to midtown New York. The Croton Aqueduct was conceived and built as a system, and its construction required the creation of a centralized administrative agency staffed by technical experts. Despite the construction of the aqueduct, however, sewers continued to be viewed as a private concern and therefore built on an individual basis. Although some sanitary reformers called for an integrated sewer system, local politicians refused to give up control of sewer construction. As a result, sewers were built in a haphazard fashion, and builders failed to use advanced materials such as vitrified pipe.

Around the middle of the century, the private perception of waste disposal began to change in response to increasing waste and new theories of disease. The Croton Aqueduct increased the amount of water coming into the city and hence the amount of wastewater going out. Physicians also demonstrated a clear connection between human waste and disease. Following the work of the English sanitarian Edwin Chadwick, physicians and civil engineers lobbied for an integrated system of sanitation. These sanitary reformers also argued that they were the best group to direct sanitary policy.

In the 1850s and 1860s, the New York state government turned over control of many city services, such as police, sewers, and health, to new regional agencies. As part of this process, authority over sewers was taken out of the hands of local politicians and turned over to the Croton Aqueduct Department. Sanitary reformers were appointed to this agency because of new respect for their technical expertise and objectivity.

In the 1870s, William M. Tweed, the Democratic Party boss, regained control of city services and centralized them in his own hands. Boss Tweed put civil engineers in charge of sewer policy and funded sewer construction with city taxes. As a result, engineers could finally build an integrated sewer system with advanced materials. Why would the notoriously corrupt Tweed support professional management? Goldman shrewdly suggests that the political goals of the Tweed Ring and the professional goals of engineers were both served by an aggressive public works program. Goldman also argues that elite Democrats continued this policy, which served as a model for city government in the Progressive era. This argument is, however, overstated; the path to “modern” utility policy was much more tortuous. Throughout the 1880s, the example of the Tweed Ring was used to block municipal improvements. This only began to change in the 1890s in response to the growing political power of the utility companies.

Goldman’s book fills an important gap in the history of public utilities, but that is not its chief contribution. Her real achievement is showing how political and economic factors shaped water supply and sewer policy. Goldman’s treatment of these influences is both subtle and sure. The main problem with the book is that it is too short. Although Goldman knows a great deal of political and public health history...