INTRODUCTION

The hydrologic issues involved in the planning, design, and operation of the project remain relevant. The proposal to build the canal aroused environmental fears lest it become a victim of the adverse hydrologic effects of the expected development of land that the building of a canal would induce. The project design failed to anticipate the problems of water supply, floods, hydraulic inefficiencies, and sedimentation that beset navigation throughout its history. None proved fatal for the Erie, and its endurance demonstrated the feasibility of major hydraulic works in this country.

A bold undertaking, the Erie Canal fit terrain and technology to the needs of trade. Despite unending hydrological difficulties the canal fulfilled the primary purpose of inland canal service. Bulky products of farm and forest moved down the canal to tidewater; returning barges carried manufactured goods for the growing farms and cities of the Midwest, together with immigrants to swell the east-west cycle of trade.

Figure 1 shows that only in New York is there a westward-leading saddle that is below 500 feet in elevation. Few facts about the topography of New York were as well and early known as the potentials of the New York pass. The Surveyors-General of the Province of New York and of the State of New York referred to it on several occasions. In 1768, Governor Sir Henry Moore sent to the legislature his recommendations for the improvement of "commerce with the interior part of the country" by making the Mohawk River navigable. The Western Lock Navigation Company, chartered in 1792 for this purpose, built locks and sluices around the Little Falls and at German Flats on the Mohawk River and built a canal across the short saddle at Rome (Fort Stanwix) to connect the east-flowing Mohawk with the west-flowing Wood Creek. (See fig. 2.)

These works were not successful. Attempts to remove riffles and other river bars were fruitless. Frequently disrupted by uncertain river behavior and by floods, droughts, and other vagaries of the river regimen, transportation fell far short of the opportunities for trade.

Yet the demands became urgent, as the geographical possibilities made New York sensitive to the potential diversion of the trade of the Great Lakes region to the port of Montreal. This anxiety was shared with equal intensity by the colonial governor, Sir Henry Moore, and by the revolutionary patriot Governor Morris who, among others, early in the 19th century, began to promote the concept of an independent canal-one free of natural watercourses-from tidewater up to Lake Erie at an elevation of 572 feet above mean sea level and above the falls at Niagara. This scheme would open up the vast Great Lakes region to the port of New York and offer that city a trading region greater than that tributary to any other American port.

Even so, the seemingly obvious facts of geography contributed to the many uncertainties and controversies about the scheme at this promotional stage. Why go west overland all the way to Lake Erie? Would it not be simpler and less costly to adopt a shorter route down the valley of the Oswego River to Lake Ontario? Such a route was indeed described in 1808 by Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury. His report also described a canal around Niagara Falls that would provide navigation between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. In addition, there were the environmental fears already mentioned, and uneasiness about the economics of the proposal. Finally, and most important as events proved, was the prospect of a railway described as early as 1812 by John Stevens with a warning of early technological obsolescence of a canal.

Again, the clear and present advantages of a canal continued to stimulate action. There was evidence of the effect of canals on the economy and technology in Great Britain where the canal age was reaching its fulfillment in lowering drastically the cost of coal, iron, and limestone, the raw materials of the emerging iron and steam age.

Moreover, the horse-drawn canal barge represented a proven performance that was an order of magnitude greater than that of road haulage. A team of four horses on a common road could haul 1 ton 12 miles in a day, or 1 ´ tons on a "turnpike" with a 5 degree ruling grade. As an example, a five-horse team hauled 3 tons in 3 days over the 75-mile turnpike from Columbia, Pa., to Philadelphia (Ringwalt, 1888, p. 33). By contrast, one horse could draw a 30-ton barge on a slackwater canal at a steady rate of 2 miles per hour. Most of the lift required to raise goods "uphill" was provided, hydraulically.

These prospects for improved transport seemed sufficient in 1808 for the State legislature to authorize surveys for routes between the Hudson River and Lake Erie, to Lake Ontario, and northward from Albany to the St. Lawrence River by way of Lake Champlain. Thus began the serious processes of information gathering and report making.

The information gathering naturally enough began with reconnaissance of topography (lines and levels), but more detailed information had to be obtained. Water would be needed to fill and maintain a canal; information would be needed about the earth and rock materials to be encountered or avoided in its construction, and about potential threats from floods and erosion.

There were two basic reports. The first was that of the Commissioners of 1811, appointed by the State legislature in March 1810 "to explore the route of an inland navigation from Hudson's River to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie." The seven Commissioners were headed by Governer Morris, who had been one of those who participated in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Their report issued in 1811, of which Morris was the putative author, was based on some surveys made in 1808-9, and on a trip made by the Commissioners by batteau, stage, and foot over the entire 360 mile length. The second report was prepared by the Commissioners of 1816, "to provide communication by canals and locks between the Hudson and Lake Erie, and Lake Champlain," DeWitt Clinton, chairman. Clinton, who had been one of those who served on the Commission, headed by Morris who died in 1816, became the force in promoting the canal project.

In the space of 38 pages, the Commissioners of 1811 described the geography, the economics, and the competitive situation vis-a-vis Canada. They concluded that a canal should be independent of rivers, and that conclusion made feasible the recommendation of a route directly to Lake Erie. Their report included estimates of the cost. What today would be called a planning report, it set loose a great deal of argument. Some of its dramatic "ahead-of-the-times" proposals became subjects for ridicule and proponents of the canal feared such ideas might endanger the canal proposal. Although it omitted mention of a railway alternative to a canal, then already in prospect, it raised other technological issues that surfaced from time to time over the years long after the canal was built. For example, the report identified the water supply potentials of a diversion of water from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. It recognized the potentials of a ship canal across the State, and voiced environmental questions in clear language. But chiefly it represented in inchoate form the kind of preliminary "think-tank" report that is now often considered a desirable part of water planning.

The second report (1816-17 Assembly Jour., 40th sess., p. 313 et seq), that of the Commissioners of 1816, under De Witt Clinton as chairman, completed in the light of the arguments and published debate induced by the first report, accepted its main recommendations for an independent canal to Lake Erie. This report presented the final choices for the project. Incorporating the results of the additional topographic and soil surveys, the report also set out the yardages of excavation and fill, and estimated costs, reach by reach. The Commissioners of 1816 and their engineers took advantage of experience on the Middlesex Canal, 27 miles long with 20 locks, that had been built in 1803 to join the Charles River at Boston with the Merrimack River. Today this report would constitute what is called "project formulation and design." Unknowns would have to be resolved during construction and later during operation.

The project was authorized and begun in 1817. When completed in 1825, the canal had a length of 363 miles, and 81 lift locks. As shown on figure 3, the canal, 40 feet deep and 4 feet deep, ran from tidewater at Hudson River near Albany, through a staircase of 20 locks, to the Mohawk River at a point above Cohoes Falls (elev 160 ft)., thence following the valley plain of the Mohawk until it reached the saddle between the Mohawk drainage and the Great Lakes drainage at about 420 feet elevation near the present city of Rome. From the Rome saddle, the canal went directly westward, now crossing rather than paralleling the natural drainage, The formidable 65-foot Niagara escarpment of limestone (then called the mountain ridge) was crossed by a set of double, combined locks at a place to be called, descriptively enough, Lockport. Turning south, the canal entered Lake Erie at Buffalo, elevation 572 feet, and so earned its name from its Lake Erie destination, as was the custom of the times in naming roads. As constructed, the canal permitted the passage of boats 78 feet long, 14 feet wide, and of 3 feet 6 inches draft, but boats at first were only 70 feet long and 7 feet wide with a capacity or burden of 30 tons, the same as those customary on the British canals. By standards of the time, the Erie was a "broad" canal. With steadily increasing traffic, the canal was widened and deepened over the years 183265 in virtually its original location and levels to permit the transport of barges of 240 tons. Transport tonnage reached its peak in the 1880's. In 1899, George W. Rafter expressed the following conclusion in a report of the U.S. Geological Survey (Water-Supply Paper 24, p. 13).

Erie Canal has not only passed its day of usefulness, but, to some extent, stands in the way of future development, the chief cause for this being a too pronounced regard for the canals former greatness.

Nevertheless, early in the 1900's in an effort to revive its former role in the economy of the State, the canal was again enlarged. This time, the Mohawk River was canalized for lock and dam navigation by self-propelled barges or barge tows. Called the State Barge Canal, it has little resemblance hydrologically to the former Erie Canal. The old and the new have chiefly in common that they carry about the same tonnage.

The basic record of design and performance is to be found in the annual reports of the Canal Commissioners to the legislature. A summary of the political and administrative history of the Erie Canal, as well as biographical material, is well documented by Whitford (1906) and its economic influences were more recently analyzed by Goodrich and others (1961). There are many other histories of a popular sort. None are analytical of its intrinsic hydraulic and hydrologic character.

This account looks at the water use and the water problems of its operations. The first section analyzes the primary decisions that centered on such fundamentals as the route-to Lake Ontario or to Lake Erie; the profile - a graded, inclined plane or one that follows the terrain; and the size-balancing between the faults of being too small or too expensive. The main sections of this report review the hydrological and environmental consequences of the design and operations.

The Erie Canal is usually considered to be a successful engineering project. And so it was, but only to the extent that operations and maintenance could cope with the burdens of its deficiencies of design, and to the degree that it became neither an environmental victim nor a source of environmental disaster. As to matters of current concern, the hydrological history of the Erie, Canal provides insight on:

1. The operational problems that resulted from undertaking a major project without proper hydraulic data.
2. The outcome of unfavorable environmental projections made at the start and the probable subsequent effect of this outcome on environmental assessments of water development in the United States.

| Environmental Aspects of the Erie Canal | Acknowledgements |