Hard Choices: Supplying Water to New England Towns

Abstract

Hard Choices: Supplying Water to New England Towns In ancient cultures, and until relatively modern times, the availability of water was a controlling factor in the spatial distribution of population. In the United States, at least until the end of the nineteenth century, the presence of potable water was a major consideration in the location of towns. Boston's site, for example, was chosen in part because of reported good springs nearby. The availability of water constrains urban life in another way: the quantity of available pure water may constitute a bottleneck to urban growth. In the absence of advanced water technology, there is a hypothetical maximum attainable size for an urban settlement, determined in part by topography and water resources, beyond which the local groundwater or surface water source becomes too polluted to sustain a population. Even without resort to filtration or other water purification measures, the transportation of water from a pure and protected source to a population center can overcome this constraint on city size. The more efficient the delivery system, the larger the potential size of the city. Long-distance transportation of water allows cities to develop and grow at sites where water shortages would once have precluded settlement, as with Los Angeles, which owes its existence to water piped in from the Colorado River and northern California.