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WATER FOR GOTHAM: A HISTORY. By Gerard T. Koeppel. Princeton University; 360 pages; $29.95 and L18.95
NEW YORK'S history is richer in villains than heroes. When considerations of personal profit and power have conflicted with those of civic well-being, the citizens have invariably emerged the losers. Nothing illustrates this better than the long struggle to provide Lower Manhattan with a clean and ample supply of water, achieved only after thousands had died from the diseases that thrived in its putrid wells, and acres of property had been destroyed in fires that raged through lack of water to fight them.
Gerard Koeppel tells an absorbing tale of corruption, incompetence, delay and political chicanery. Few, then, should be surprised that one of the principal characters in the early scenes of the drama was a colourful senator, and later, vice-president, Aaron Burr, notorious for slaying Alexander Hamilton in a duel. After an epidemic of yellow fever in 1798, in which coffins had been sold by itinerant vendors on street comers, Burr established the Manhattan Company,...