University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses 5-22-2006 At the Confluence of Science and ower:P Water Struggles of New Orleans in the Nineteenth Century Carolyn Kolb University of New Orleans Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Recommended Citation Kolb, Carolyn, "At the Confluence of Science and Power: Water Struggles of New Orleans in the Nineteenth Century" (2006). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 386. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/386 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. 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AT THE CONFLUENCE OF SCIENCE AND POWER: WATER STRUGGLES OF NEW ORLEANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban History by Carolyn Goldsby Kolb B.A. Newcomb College, Tulane University, 1963 M.A. University of New Orleans, 1998 May, 2006 Copyright 2006, Carolyn Goldsby Kolb ii Table of Contents Abstract.............................................................................................................................. iv Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 Trickle by Trickle, 1789-1803 ..........................................................................33 Chapter 2 Pipe Dreams, 1803-1822...................................................................................50 Chapter 3 Building Blocks, 1818-1830 .............................................................................74 Chapter 4 Banking on Improvements, 1830-184...............................................................84 Chapter 5 Bricks and Mortar: Albert Stein’s Reservoir, 1835.........................................110 Chapter 6 Sodden Impact, 1835-1855 .............................................................................137 Chapter 7 Un-Reconstructed City: Looking Back From 1880 ........................................176 Chapter 8 Bourbons and Water, 1880-1898 ....................................................................199 Chapter 9 The Upstream Battle: 1890-1899 ....................................................................223 Chapter 10 Hurricane Katrina and the Sewerage and Water Board ................................245 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................251 Appendices Appendix I Population Tables ....................................................................................257 Appendix II Mortality Tables .....................................................................................265 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................267 Vita...................................................................................................................................276 iii Abstract New Orleans failed to solve its water infrastructure problems in the nineteenth century because a shifting locus of power in a variable political and financial environment hampered wise decision making, while technology choices were limited by contemporary knowledge, scientists’ ignorance, or by technicians’ poor presentation skills for new ideas. And, selection was often governed by prejudice: personal, racial, or against technology. New Orleans was able to deal with its water difficulties only when those with the power to make or influence decisions had an available technology capable of handling the problem and they chose to use it. Power and science had to flow together. New Orleans’s situation is excellent: a crossroads of trade, an entrepot for the agricultural heartland, the Mississippi River’s premier port. And yet, the city’s site is dreadful. New Orleans sits in a bowl of land rimmed by water, with the river and the brackish Lake Pontchartrain on either side, amid swampy environs in a hot and wet climate. This city exists only because of the complex system by which it deals with water. The conundrum of New Orleans lies at the confluence of science and power. Whoever holds the power can choose the science and technology with which New Orleans handles water, its ever- present best friend and worst enemy. From the colonial era to the twentieth century, the power to make those choices shifted from the private sector to the public sector and back, with the press and, eventually, women ultimately having influence. Under the fading Spanish empire, from the age of Jefferson to the era of Jacksonian democracy, during the Civil War and Reconstruction, through the dawn of Progressivism: New Orleans confronted the problems of flood prevention, drainage, the omni- iv present need for a dependable water source for its citizens, and eventually sewerage disposal. This study investigates how those problems were faced, what technology was used and how the work was financed; and also illuminates the lives of those who dealt with New Orleans and water during that time. v Introduction Water rules New Orleans – or does New Orleans rule water? Water provided the rationale for the city’s location. The situation was ideal: a point on the banks of a river that drained the vast interior and served as a route for trade. The land at this riparian point was higher, raised by increments from sediment dropped by annual overflow. Nearby was a large brackish lake, accessed by a small stream a mere portage away from the edge of the mighty river. This lake could be reached by water from the gulf and the open sea, and on its northern shores inland rivers provided access to the lands beyond. Across the river from the new city, a tangle of sluggish bayous wound down to the gulf. New Orleans was placed at a crossroads, with three ways of access to the ocean and a multitude of watery paths to the interior of the continent. Water was never far away. Besides the open river and lake and bayous, water passively filled the swamps that edged the dry land, water oozed and flowed with tides through the marshes where the salty sea lapped over the grasses, water came in torrential rains from the heavens, water seeped up from the ground where it lurked in oozing strata just below the roots of the vines and trees that covered the fertile earth with green. Stranger still, water was always lurking above the very land where the city was placed, for New Orleans huddles in a bowl of earth ringed by the higher levels of the lake and river, the concave silhouette of the land broken only by elevated lines where other streams had marked their courses in the past. 1 The water surrounded the city and, when weather and luck failed, the water might soak and flood and cover the land where the city so tenuously stood. If the site of the city was a wretched one, its situation – the city’s place in regard to neighboring places – was sensible. The city was founded in 1718, at the location chosen by French Canadian Jean Baptiste LeMoyne Sieur de Bienville, after he and his brother Pierre LeMoyne Sieur d’Iberville considered settlement possibilities in the years after an exploratory trip of 1699. The choice was sound: France needed a market outpost for trading on the lower Mississippi River. While surrounded by wetlands, the city would be predominantly dry, with a location on a natural levee of the river, on land built up by centuries of flooding. The French in Canada and along the upper Mississippi would have a new source for furs and another outlet for trade. Besides, the French could lay claim to a larger swath of North America when the New Orleans area, the gateway to the river route, was secure. Added to those considerations was the city’s position on water routes through which trade could flow. Besides the route up the Mississippi River, New Orleans could be reached through Lake Pontchartrain, from which Bayou St. John led to a point a short portage from the river bank. The lake also offered market routes up the rivers that fed into its northern shore from the inland South. In a third approach, shallow draft craft could come up from Barataria Bay on the Gulf of Mexico through shallow bayous on the West bank of the river to a point just across from the city. Thus, trade routes and a strategic location for defense were the deciding factors for the decision on where the settlement of New Orleans would be. 1 Approaching by the river, the view that early explorers had of Louisiana terrain was in many ways similar to what is seen by a traveler today – brown river water lapping at a shoreline of willow trees and canes, with oaks on higher land providing a low mound of horizon. On Lake 2 Pontchartrain, the shoreline verges into cypress-filled swamps. The modern city still perches between