Evening Star Newspaper, January 31, 1932, Page 83

| < How American B ngi— neering Brains Built a Dam of Classic Marble to Give ModernAthensEFresh Water,Increasing the Supply of a System Built by Hadrian 1,800 Years Ago. MAGINE yourself trying to get along with just one and one-half gallons of water a day, for drinking, bathing, cooking, wash- ing, everything Inconceivable—and yet the citizens of Athens, Greece, scrimped along on that amount for centuries. Limited rainfall causes a semi-arid condition on the historic Plains of Attica. Difficulties of bringing water from dis- tant sources seemed unsurmountable to the Greeks But when the supply per person per day threatened to drop to a meager one gallon, they decided to do something about it. Incapable of remedying the situation them- selves because of financial and engineering dif- ficulties, they turned to America for help. They found it. In a short time an American firm had commissioned Richard M. Merriman, noted construction engineer from Bethlehem, Pa. to take charge of the matter. Within a few weeks he had 5000 Greek la- borers at work building a gigantic dam near the exact site of the immortal Battle of Mara- thon, and pierced the mountains with a tunnel to convey the waters to thirsty Athenians Mr. Merriman has just returned to America as a hero—a hero in Athens, that is. For he had blest the people there by raising their daily water apportionment to 16 gallons per person! HE job was done in five years, at a cost of $12,500,000 When you consider the tremendous difficul- ties to be surmounted in improving the supply for Athens, it becomes clear that Mr. Merri- man’s job was among the greater engineering feats ever to be accomplished in Southern Europe The project at Athens becomes all the more pignificant because of the historic background. Mr. Merriman supervised construction of & dam 1,000 feet long and 175 feet high. It is 145 feet thick at the base, and wide enough at the top to carry a roadway. Built under the most modern construction methods, it is named Marathon Dam, for near that spot, in 490 B. C., Miltiades led a Grecian army to victory over the Persians in one of the world’s decisive battles. There at the junc- tion of the Haradra and Verana Rivers the immortal Pheidippides, bearing the news of victory, started his long run to Athens, a feat of physical endurance which moderns are still celebrating 14 WAS always conscious of working on hal- lowed greund,” Mr. Merriman says. “Partially familiar with Grecian history and mytholcgy, I naturally hed an interest in the surroundings when I got there. But when I found that the dam site must be at the edge of this historic battleficld, I felt a peculiar awe toward it. “No, I don't lieve it materially affected our work, for the Athenians are accustomed to backgrounds of that sort in all their endeavors. They live and die under the shadow of the Parthenon. All their history is wrapped around artistic achicvement, so it is more or less commcn to them. “But when I found that we of the American were to use Pentelic marble on the new I was really proud of it! old Phidias, Athenian sculptor and C durirg the reign cf Pericles and of the Parthencn, used Pentelic marble too! firm dam arct builder on his jcb, g structure on the Acropolis still stands first pure cxampie, the very beginning, It has been the mecca 2.000 veors the of Doric u of architect more ‘h~n 11] CAN hoy for no simiar tribute to the Marathon Dam, but I can assure you it is not hurt any in appearznce to be faced with the beautiful 1g marble frcm the hills of Pentelic When t American layman learns that Athe Mara.hon Dam, creating a new city water reservoir, is faced with expensive marble from the historic Pentelic Quarries, questions as to the expenditure of money are heard im- medizt 1 Few American millionaries can afford Pen- telic marble in their homes. And when it is remembered that Roosevelt and Coolidge Dams in Arizona are of prosaic, unfaced concrete, that Hoover Dam—bicgest in all history—will have no ornamenting ble, skepticism as to Mr. Merriman's ecenoiny may be heard. But the answer is simple. “In Greece,” he c¢xplains, “stone masons are plentifu! and excellent artisans, while carpen- ters zre few. Lumber for forms and cement for concrete muzt be import:d from abroad and are expensive, while the Pentelic marble is located but a stone's throw from the site of the dam. “It was therefore less expensive to construct the faces of the dam of marble, and fill between THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JANUARY 31, 1932. Y 4 picture of the new Marathon Dam, on the site of one of the u orld’s most famous battles. these walls with cyclcpean concrete, rather than to build the relatively exp:nsive forms re- quired for an all concrete structure “S0 quite naturally we used it And if it far-famed beauty adds something to the pearance of the finished dam. th.n we doubly fortunate.” UILDING the dam, he points out means all of the wcrk water then had to be 19 miles away, and the aqueduct was one of the most interesting parts of the jcb. : “We were forced to cress Parnes Di- vide, a mountain water shed, with an eight- mile tunnel,” he says. “It is called the Boysti Tunnel. “One-half of the other half in clay This latter was excavated with pneumatic shovels. The tunnel was finished as it was excavated, being lined with precast concrete blocks, of which 390,000 were required “One of the most interesting things we did was to clean out and generally renovate the ancient Hadrian Aqueduct, a 15-mile tunnel through the Plains of Attica, 150 feet under- ground. was by no necessary The conveyed to the city, construction of this the the tunnel was in rock, and conglomerate “This extraordinary aqueduct was built about . the year 100 by the Roman emperor, Hadrian. He was a highly efficient engineer, and some of his achievements make us moderns blush to think of our limited advance in knowleCge did a good job, for the Romans were builders “The ancient Hadtian Aqueduct is in reality an extremely lcng horizontal well or infiltration gallery good The new dam teok away her job. He - Richard M. Merriman, who used Pen- telic marble for his dam. and saw his crushed stone broken by hand. " ADRIAN'S plan—and it worked—was to dig this agueduct, collect fresh under- ground water, and lead it to Athens. “The great city used this aqueduct for more than 1200 years, then for some reason aban- doned it. For four centuries the Hadrian Aqueduct was lost and forgotten, but finally An Athenian waier vendor of the old type, necessary in the days of the perennial water shortage. - it was found again, was cleaned out and put back into serv “It was still in service when we got there in 1925, and one of our duties was to clean it out and fit it for additional service. Goodness knows how many more centuries it will serve, but it is surely a tribute to the skill of its builder.” Virtually all of the crushed stone used in building roads in Greece, including those neces- sary for construction of the dam, is prepared by women and children laborers. It is a com- mon sight to see women, hooded like bihtical figures, sitting on a stone pile at work with their hammers. Their output of crushed rock is about one cubic meter per woman-day. SURPRISING thing, however, was that it was niecessary to force the 5,000 workmen to eat sufficiently! “Strangely, the Grecian knows very little of eating balanced foods.” Mr. Merriman said. “And we know that the workers could not stand up under hard physical labor i they were not adequately nourished. “Left to his own devices, the average Greek workman will eat great quantities of bread, and little else, largely because he is a frugal soul who wants to be very economical. He is seldom aware of the necessity of a balanced ration. “But such economy is false, and we Ameri- cans know it. Therefore we held out 27 cents per day of his wages and bought food with it for him. We fed our men in their own dining rooms, exactly as is done in big con- struction projects of this sort in America. “In fact we established a full-fledged town on the building site for our 5,000 workers and the families of those who were married. By this correct and ‘“enforced” feeding we main- tained a good standard of efficiency among men who otherwise would have been toc under- nourished.” It was necessary also to combat malaria con- stantly during the construction period, through control of the disease-bearing mosquito. Sleepe ing and living quarters were doubly scroened, stagnant water was either drained or oiled, to prevent mosquitoes from breeding. Quinine— a specific cure for malaria infection—was issuafy daily to all persons on the scenc, as an ad&e tional safeguard. o HEN the extent of the new lake became known to residents in the country a hue and cry arose because of the alleged danger from malaria. Citizens protested that the new lake would be an ideal breeding place for the deadly anopheles mosquito, which is an ime termediate host for malaria germs “But immediately a solution to the problem was offered,” Mr. Merriman tells “Somebody told us that the Gambusa fish, common in Italy, was a deadly enemy of the mosquito larvae, the wiggletails that live first in water before emerging as mosquitoes. The Gambusa is a tiny fellow, the female of the family being the largest and getting to be 3% inches long when grown. “We thought it might be worth the expense to send to Italy for a start of the Gambusa fishes, and to propagate them in the new lake, “But when they arrived only 200 fish had been sent! “Here was a lake big enough to supply water to a huge city, and 200 tiny fish dropped in to combat the countless billions of mosquito lar- vae that must develop. I was disgusted. But we dropped the 200 fish in. “One year later I inspected the lake and found, to my astonishment, literally millions of the little fish. I don't suppose a wiggletail had the remotest chance of surviving in suchan environment.”