Now to provide for the section of the city between Fourteenth and Grandstreets on Broadway, and Fourteenth and Pearl-streets on Chatham-street, on the east side of the city, by cisterns, would require the construction of at least 60 additional cisterns, supposing that each thousand feet square required a cistern, and if we estimate them at $600 each, (including expenses of assessments,) it will make the sum of $36,000. The cisterns would probably not last longer than 20 or 25 years, and would require considerable expense in repairs of leaks, and for leaders, &c., during that time.

Your Committee have come to the conclusion to recommend to the Board, the laying down of two lines of iron pipes, for the security against fires, of the section of the city above described. They propose that the Corporation should lease three or four lots of the Sailors' Snug Harbor estate, or near there. The elevation of the surface there, say Broadway and Fourteenth-street above the levels of the rivers, is 39 feet. The highest part of the city below Fourteenth-street, does not exceed 42 feet. A rise, or additional head at Fourteenth-street, (as a starting point,) of three feet, would give the necessary head to make the water flow over the surface of the highest streets in the city, and would give an excess of head over four-fifths of the section of the city referred to, of at least fifteen feet. But as a reservoir would be necessary to hold the supply of water, an additional head of 20 feet is proposed to be in this manner obtained for 2,000 hogsheads (equal to twenty cisterns,) which will be contained in a reservoir.