Broad Brook Canal

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The Broad Brook Canal is a water-supply canal feeding the Springfield Reservoir in Ludlow, Massachusetts, a public water supply for the city of Springfield, Massachusetts. Its northern segment is also known as the Jabish Canal.

The canal was first constructed circa 1875. It was 11,960 feet in length, and fed the Springfield Reservoir at its eastern side with water collected in the Belchertown Reservoir and swamp. This water, however, was thought to be of poor quality, and thus in 1890-91 the canal was extended north through the Belchertown Reservoir to Jabish Brook, east of Broad Brook. After this addition, the canal's total length was about 8 miles, of which 1,400 feet ran through a cast iron pipe (54 inches in diameter) across the Cherry Valley dam. The entire canal was worked to be 22 feet wide at the surface, 8 feet wide at the bottom, with a depth of 4.66 feet.

[edit] References

• Springfield (Massachusetts) Board of Water Commissioners, Report for the year ending Dec. 31, 1875, page 61.
• Moses Nelson Baker, The Manual of American Water-works, New York : Engineering News Publishing Company, 1891, page 41.
• Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Examinations by the State Board of Health of the Water Supplies and Inland Waters of Massachusetts, Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1890, page 297.