Moline Water Works Department
The City of Moline has an unusually good water works system (the supply coming from the Mississippi River), consisting of a pumping station and filtering plant, and thirty-five miles of street water mains, with three hundred and twenty-five city fire hydrants, fifty private hydrants, and two hundred and. forty-five valves. The number of gallons of water filtered during the year ending April 1, 1908, amounted to 988,419,230 gallons, or 2,700,598 gallons per day. The total number of gallons of water pumped to the City of Moline for the said year was 949,711,378 gallons, being a daily consumption of 2,594,-839 gallons, being a daily increase over the previous year of 151,792 gallons. They have 3,250 service taps, making an average of 831 gallons of water per day. to each tap, or a per capita consumption of one hundred gallons for the entire City of Moline. The consumption of fuel for the past year was 7,114,000 pounds of coal, being 19,437 pounds for each day. By computation, filtering 1,904 gallons of water for each pound of coal consume]. Cost, of coal for past year $5,838.59, or $15.95 for each twenty-four hours. Coagulates used the past year in the filtering plant, 412,870 pounds of lime, being 3.13 grains for each gallon; 106,780 pounds of iron, or .81 grains per gallon; 19,875 pounds of alum, or 2.146 grains per gallon. 923,326,790 gallons of water were filtered with lime and iron at a cost of $1.17 per million gallons of water; the cost of iron being seventy-five cents per million gallons. Water filtered by alum at a cost of $3.05 per million gallons. Cost of filtering water for the past year has been $5,881.20, or $5.95 per million gallons. The total cost of pumping and filtering the water used during the past year, including all expenses at the water works and filtering plant, and water main expenses, has been $22,787.16, or equal to $22.04 per million gallons.
Source: Historic Rock Island County, pub. Kramer & Company, Rock Island, Illinois, 1908