The Scandal of the Ghost Sewers
A newly appointed Board of Public Works uncovers evidence of rampant incompetence and political patronage in the city's sewer construction project.
Mayor Ronald and the new Board of Public Works, consisting of Andrew Jackson, R. H. Calligan, and J. W. Van Brocklin, toured the city's new sewer construction sites yesterday. They discovered that the previous board had opened miles of ditches without adequate planning or material, likely to force the new administration to keep a bloated workforce employed. At Rollin Street, the new board found men digging a sewer that had never been surveyed; the foreman admitted he was just digging based on verbal orders from the previous regime. The new board members expressed shock at the lack of system, noting that in some areas, workers were digging through twenty-foot hills of hardpan where tunneling would have been cheaper, all while abandoning work as soon as water seeped in. The investigation suggests the work was a 'political job' intended to drain the city treasury.
“The ground looks as if a hen had been managing the work. Men are scattered thickly over the whole district, working helter skelter.”
This early account of 'political jobs' and infrastructure mismanagement echoes contemporary frustrations with municipal project delays, budget overruns, and the opaque nature of city infrastructure contracts in a growing city.
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