mon Council of this city, on or before the first day of January, 1836, The Commissioners have presumed, however, that a paramount object of their reappointment was a close and thorough re-examination, under such additional lights as time and further reflection may have produced, of the plans they have proposed, and of the estimates they have entered into, extending their inquiries to any new matter alluded to by the act of the Legislature, referred to them by the Common Council, or suggested to them by others, for effecting the object in view, or, as improvements upon the plans and estimates proposed by their former report. With these views of what would be required of them, and in order to test the correctness of the plans proposed by their report of November, 1833, the Commissioners engaged David B. Douglas, Esq., to re-examine his surveys, levels and calculations, and to ascertain whether lines for an aqueduct may not be designated that will require less labor and expense than those recommended by the report of 1833 whether a more economi- ;
cal method of constructing the aqueduct may not be adopted whether the cost of build- ;
ing culverts and bridges, making excavations and embankments, erecting the reservoirs, estimating the damages to water rights, &c., may not be reduced whether the expense of ;
equalizing reservoirs may not be dispensed with and finally, whether the waters of ;
the Croton may not be introduced from some different head, or by some other method, and at a much less cost, than that estimated in the report of 1833. On the 31st of December, 1833, something more than a month after we had presented our report to the Common Council, Mr. D. S. Rhodes addressed a communication to the Board of Aldermen, proposing, for one million seven hundred thousand dollars, to introduce, through iron pipes, from the mouth of the Croton river, six million gallons of water every twenty-four hours and for two million seven hundred thousand dollars, to ;