12 n March of 1913, on flooding was part of a the nation: the creation Easter weekend and mammoth and violent storm of Great Sacandaga Lake with no warning, system that hit about fifteen (in Fulton, Saratoga, and disaster struck upstate states in total and devastated Hamilton Counties) as part INew York. Wreaking death half a dozen Midwestern of a statewide system of and destruction, the Hudson states, especially Ohio. But reservoirs for controlling the River rapidly rose to flood the great 1913 flood in New flow of the Hudson River; heights that still stand as York brought two significant and dramatic proof of the records in some places. The legacies to the state and effectiveness of chlorinated NEW YORK archives • WINTER 2013 13 The Great Easter Flood of 1913 was America’s most widespread natural disaster. But the damage it caused in New York State, particularly in Albany, led to scientific and engineering remedies that are still in force today. Broadway in Albany, March 29, 1913, during the Great Easter flood. The Hudson River flooding in Albany eventually gave the New York State Legislature the political will to create the Sacandaga Reservoir (now Great Sacandaga Lake) to regulate the Hudson’s flow. drinking water to combat York could absorb no more heavy sleet downed tele- BY TRUDY E. BELL ALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY & ART LIBRARY typhoid fever and other water. On Good Friday, graph and telephone poles water-borne diseases. March 21, a strong arctic and wires across the east- high-pressure system swept ern half of the nation. The A One-Two Punch from Ontario to the Gulf of resulting communications After an unusually warm Mexico with sustained hur- outages prevented the U.S. and wet winter of soaking ricane-force winds that in Weather Bureau from rains and almost no snow, Buffalo topped ninety either gathering informa- the sodden soils across New miles an hour. Winds and tion or sending warnings www.nysarchivestrust.org 14 NEW YORK STATE ARCHIVES about much worse to come. walls, and rose well above the as is still the case today— Runoff from On Easter Sunday, March lowlands into downtown city most homes and businesses 23, torrential rains began to streets, flooding streetcar lines, did not carry flood insurance, saturated soil tripled pound. In New York, the power generating stations, nor was flooding covered by Genesee River rose so fast and sewage treatment plants. standard policies. the discharge of both that it surpassed its previous In Watervliet, the angry waters the Hudson and height of 1865 and flooded reached five feet deep in Trying to Control Water downtown Rochester up to some streets. In Troy, burst By 1913, both major and minor Mohawk Rivers in six feet deep for three days. gas lines ignited fires that floods along the lowlands North of Albany, the equiva- raged through downtown, of the Hudson River were forty-eight hours, lent of four to six weeks of leaving smoking ruins. common. Moreover, as the giving them a normal rainfall fell in five days On April 5, a special report Industrial Revolution spread in over the watersheds of the in Dun’s Review estimated that the late nineteenth and early combined flow Mohawk and Hudson Rivers. direct damage to the state’s twentieth centuries, paper mills Runoff from saturated soil business property, and collateral and manufacturing plants equivalent to that of tripled the discharge of both effects from the interruption built along the Hudson relied the Niagara River. rivers in forty-eight hours, of transportation and industrial on both water power and giving them a combined flow activities, exceeded $1 million hydroelectric power. Not only equivalent to that of the (equivalent to about $22 million was flooding a problem, but Niagara River. Both the today), more than half of it so was low water during dry Mohawk and the Hudson suffered by Troy. But the report summers. reached record heights on did not tally losses for many As early as 1867, a series Friday, March 28. Worse, the cities, including Binghamton of dams and reservoirs to crests of the two rivers coin- and Rochester, nor did it protect against floods was cided by the time high water include losses to agriculture first proposed to the New reached the rivers’ confluence or damage to personal prop- York State Legislature—but to Above: Homes along the Hudson River in Fort Edward, Washington at Albany and Troy. erty, even though thousands no avail. In 1905, the state County, in the Adirondacks were The churning rivers tore out of homes and farms were established a Water Supply partially submerged during the bridges, undermined railway flooded. Such uncounted Commission to examine Great Easter 1913 flood. embankments, destroyed river losses ruined many: in 1913— regulation of the Hudson’s NEW YORK archives • WINTER 2013 15 flow during both floods and to clarify the water, then the droughts to keep hydroelectric filtered water was chlorinated turbines turning. In 1907, the to disinfect it. Municipal disin- commission proposed a system fection of water supplies, of reservoirs throughout the which added small amounts of state for storing water in times hypochlorite of lime (basically of excessive runoff and releas- powdered bleach) to combat ing it as needed to maintain serious waterborne diseases stable river flows. Pulp and such as typhoid fever, was still paper mills also proposed controversial in 1913; indeed, the building of an enormous the two cities that pioneered water storage reservoir on chlorination—Jersey City, New the Sacandaga River in the Jersey and Chicago, Illinois— Adirondacks, the largest trib- had started doing so only five utary of the Hudson River years earlier. Thus Albany RENSSELAER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TROY, NEW YORK entering from the west. Yet was one of the first cities to the monumental scale and chlorinate its drinking water. cost of engineering such a By 8 a.m. on Thursday, system were daunting, and March 27, the Hudson River the proposals went nowhere. was rising so fast that workers In 1913, Albany drew its at the Albany Pump Station drinking water from two hilltop barricaded the doors and reservoirs, each of which caulked all cracks with oakum delivered water through sepa- (tarred fiber) to prevent river rate pipes and supplied about water from entering and half of the city. Bleecker contaminating the filters and Reservoir was fed primarily chlorination facilities. Despite from Rensselaer Lake in Albany these precautions, water pres- (itself fed by several surface sure from the swollen river RENSSELAER COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TROY, NEW YORK streams), as well as from the burst the door of one of the Hudson River. The other, regulator houses at about sioner of Public Works Wallace Top: A fire in Troy. One of the Prospect Reservoir, was fed 4 a.m. on Friday morning, and Greenalch immediately notified ironies—and tragedies—of the only from the Hudson. Before untreated river water flooded all newspapers to warn Albany Great Easter 1913 flood was fire being pumped uphill to the filters and halted the citizens to boil their water for from broken gas mains. Troy these reservoirs, however, the disinfection operation of the at least fifteen minutes before suffered more damage from fire than from water; raging floodwaters Hudson’s water was first treated pump station. The Hudson drinking it. Pump station prevented firefighters from putting by the Albany Pump Station stayed high enough to keep engineers flushed all the water out the flames. (then called the Quackenbush the station’s filters submerged mains by opening the hydrants, Pumping Station), located for thirty hours—and thus and within twenty-four hours Bottom: Foot of Broadway, Troy. riverside on Quackenbush and raw river water, including they had set up a temporary Both the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers reached record heights on Montgomery Streets just off contamination from human chlorination plant. Friday, March 28; worse, the crests Broadway, which ran parallel to waste, was pumped up to of the two rivers coincided by the Saving Albany’s Water the river downtown. Today the Prospect Reservoir. time high water reached Albany pump station’s original build- Knowing that rural areas However, despite these quick and Troy. The water was so force- ings survive as a well-known upriver still relied on outhouses actions, when the State ful that it ripped buildings from restaurant and brew pub. rather than indoor toilets, and Department of Health sampled their foundations. Suspended particulates in that flooding and runoff would water in the two reservoirs the cloudy river water were have swept human waste into they found organisms from filtered out by the pump station the Hudson, Albany Commis- raw sewage contaminating www.nysarchivestrust.org 16 ALBANY INSTITUTE OF HISTORY & ART LIBRARY the reservoir, punched holes for typhoid. However, two to in the bags, and shook them three weeks after Prospect vigorously as they rowed Reservoir had been disinfected around the reservoir, releas- by the powdered bleach, the ing the bleach powder into incidence of new typhoid the water. The sterilization cases suddenly dropped. treatment was repeated two Meanwhile, areas of the city days later, on April 5. supplied by Bleecker Reservoir In 1913, major epidemics were less affected. of typhoid fever, a wasting The typhoid outbreak disease with a fatality rate of “constitutes one of the most about 10%, were still common, interesting and striking accounting for nearly 10,000 examples of an explosive deaths annually nationwide. epidemic due to a sudden… In those pre-antibiotic days, infection of a water supply,” Walter Reed and his co-workers wrote Theodore Horton, had demonstrated that infec- chief engineer of Albany’s tion was linked to unsanitary State Department of Health, TRUDY E.