“I suppose,” said Dr. George A. Soper of the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission, regretfully, “that the question of sewage and garbage disposal is not thought by the average person to be very interesting. As a matter of fact, it is no less interesting than a surgical operation and quite as necessary.”

In 1910 sewage was being emptied into the harbor at a rate of 700 million gallons a day. The Hudson River was so dirty that it could barely support fish. Part of the problem was that “the tide in New York Bay, for the most part, merely shifts the water about, but it does not thoroughly change it.” This had a lot of people worried and, I hope, disgusted. The article discusses alternatives to dumping sewage in the harbor, and is actually more interesting than I thought it would be.

Insert your own New Jersey joke here.

NEW YORK’S SEWAGE PROBLEM A HARD ONE TO HANDLE: Dr. George A. Soper, President of the Commission Dealing with It, Tells of Its Difficulties and What Is Being Done to Remedy It. (PDF)

From December 25, 1910