ABSTRACT
Public capital-spending projects involving technologies such as water supply, street paving, and sewers were characteristic of American cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapter focuses upon the elements involved in decisions about sewerage system design choice in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It considers the factors leading to the decision to replace the existing privy vault-cesspool system of waste removal with the sewerage or water carriage system. The chapter examines factors that were endogenous to the engineering model, such as design features, provision for storm water, and disposal. It considers the issues which were exogenous to the rational engineering design model but which intruded upon its formulation. The chapter also examines those factors that might be labeled endogeneous to those seeking to make decisions concerning the implementation of one form or another of sewerage technology.
