Scope and Content: Massachusetts has administered water works and sewage disposal for the Boston metropolitan area successively through the Board of Metropolitan Sewerage Commissioners (Metropolitan Sewerage Commission) (1889-1901) and the Metropolitan Water Board (1895-1901); the Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Board (1901-1919); and the Water and Sewerage Divisions of the Metropolitan District Commission (1919-1985).  Since 1985, the sewerage works functions have been assigned to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), and the water works functions have been shared by the MWRA (distribution) and the Metropolitan District Commission (to 2003) and the Dept.  of Conservation and Recreation (since 2003) (water supply reservoirs and their watershed management). –As part of its function to construct, maintain, and operate a metropolitan water supply system, the Water Works of the Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Board (1901-1919), and the Water Division of the Metropolitan District Commission (1919-1985) were authorized (St 1902, c 391) to document the weekly, monthly, and yearly rate of water consumption, and did so through the use of Venturi meters. The Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Board’s: Report on the measurement, consumption and waste of water supplied to the Metropolitan Water District (Feb. 1904) details the original installation of the Venturi meters in 1902-1903. Italian physicist G. B. Venturi (1746-1822) discovered ca. 1791 that when a fluid flows through a cone-shaped pipe there is a decrease in pressure at the small end. Clemens Herschel (1842-1930), a hydraulic engineer who had been a Massachusetts railroad commissioner (1881-1883) and co-designer (with William G. Preston (1842/4-1910) of the 1867 footbridge over the Public Garden Pond in Boston, applied this law of nature to a type of water meter he invented in 1887 and patented in 1888. A Venturi meter is a short pipe or tube with a constricted inner surface or throat used for measuring fluid pressures and velocities by measuring the differential pressures generated at the throat as a fluid traverses the tube. Pages 14-15 of the 1904 report describes how the Venturi meter worked as applied to this metropolitan water supply system. The Sewerage Works of the Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Board applied the first Venturi meter for the measurement of sewage in the country at the Ward Street (Roxbury) pumping station in 1904.
Arrangement: Arranged chronologically
Notes: Transferred to Archives from Metropolitan District Commission
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