that only two municipalities are mentioned in the resolve, no main branches are found to be necessary, within the meaning of the resolve.

In Peabody no general system of sewers has as yet been constructed, and it is recommended that when the town shall provide itself with a system of sewers, the separate system be employed, and that surface water and, so far as possible, ground water be excluded from the sewers. In Salem some of the existing sewers will, by means of extensions, serve as main lines of sewerage for the city.

In extending the present sewerage system of Salem it is recommended that all new systems of sewers be constructed upon the separate plan and that storm water be wholly excluded. It is also very desirable that the area from which storm water is admitted to existing sewers should be restricted as much as is practicable, in order to avoid the expense of pumping considerable quantities of storm water and to limit as much as possible the discharge of crude sewage in the vicinity of the shores at times of storms.

The resolves under which this work has been done require that the Board shall ascertain and report the cost of construction of a trunk line sewer and main branches and outlet, and report a recommendation as to the method of apportioning said cost. In the case of the metropolitan sewerage system, which includes the city of Boston and twenty-one neighboring municipalities, the act providing for the construction and operation of the system contains a provision that there shall be a new apportionment of the charges for interest, sinking fund and maintenance once in five years; and a precedent for the apportionment of the cost of construction and of maintenance and operation of the metropolitan sewers among the several cities and towns composing the metropolitan sewerage district has already been well established by the reports of two commissions appointed by the supreme court to make such apportionment. The same method of apportionment has been adopted by both commissions, and is as follows: charges for interest and sinking fund, which represent the cost of construction of the works, are based upon the valuation of the municipalities included within the district, and the charges for maintenance and operation are based upon the population. In the cases of cities or towns portions of which cannot be drained by the metropolitan system, the valuation and population

of such portions were excluded in favor of the city or town within whose limits these areas are situated.

There appears to be no more equitable method of apportioning the cost of construction of the Salem and Peabody system between these municipalities, and accordingly this method is recommended. The property valuations used by the commission appointed to apportion the cost of metropolitan sewers, which reported recently (the report being dated Oct. 16, 1896), are those established by chapter 90 of the Acts of 1895, and the valuations of Salem and Peabody established by that act are as follows:

The proposed drainage district of Salem and Peabody includes the whole of Salem, but 6.6 square miles, or 4,224 acres, in the town of Peabody will not be drained by the proposed plan. It is therefore necessary, in deciding the proportion that Peabody should pay toward the cost of the works, to determine the valuation and population of the town, exclusive of the portion outside the proposed sewerage district.

The valuations furnished by the Tax Commissioner and established by chapter 90 of the Acts of 1895 give the total valuations of the cities and towns, and it is not possible to determine exactly the valuation of the territory in the town of Peabody which will not be reached by the proposed sewer. The most accurate approximation that could be made appeared to be the following: it was possible to obtain from the assessors of Peabody the total valuation of real and personal estate in the whole town and in the portion of the town outside the proposed sewerage district for May 1, 1895. It was also possible to obtain from the Tax Commissioner the total amount of bank and corporation stock belonging to Peabody in 1894; and one of the Peabody assessors, after an examination of the records of the Tax Commissioner, made a statement as to the amount of this stock that was chargeable to the portion of the town outside the proposed sewerage district. The percentage of the total valuation of the town that is represented by the valuation of the portion outside the proposed sewerage district has been obtained from these amounts, as follows:

924,950 00

$7,460,175 00

Total for area in Peabody outside of sewerage district,

Net valuation of sewerage district, .
Percentage of total valuation in Peabody, that is, outside of sewer-
age district,

11.03084

Deducting this percentage from the total property valuation of Peabody made by chapter 90 of the Acts of 1895, which is $8,039,864, the total valuation of property in the proposed sewerage district is as follows:

The percentage of each to the total and the proportion which each municipality should pay toward the cost of the works under this apportionment at the present time is as follows:

The estimated annual cost of maintenance, including all running expenses and repairs, of the trunk sewer, pumping station and harbor outfall for Salem and Peabody, discharging at Great Aqua Vitæ Beacon, is $12,000. The present quantity of sewage produced by Salem and Peabody is estimated at 6,250,000 gallons per day, and the estimate for maintenance is based upon a quantity of sewage equivalent to 10,000,000 gallons per day, which may represent the average quantity of sewage to be disposed of for ten or more years in the future.

In estimating the proportion which each municipality should pay toward the maintenance and operation of the system, the basis used by the commissioners who apportioned the cost of metropolitan.

sewers, as already stated, is the population; and here, also, it is necessary to make allowance for the number of people in the portion of Peabody outside of the proposed sewerage district. It has not been thought necessary to attempt to determine this population with great accuracy, since an accurate estimate can be made when occasion may require. By a count of the houses in the district outside of the area draining toward the proposed sewer, it is found that there are about 103 houses in this district. Allowing a population of 5 persons to each house, the number of people in this district would be 515. Deducting this number from the population of Peabody, as determined by the census of 1895, the estimated number of people within the proposed sewerage district in the town of Peabody is 9,992.

Dividing the cost of maintenance and operation upon the basis of population, estimated as above, the proportion which Salem and Peabody would pay is shown by the following table :

In constructing public works of this magnitude it is customary to raise the money for the work by issuing bonds, and in cases like the one under consideration, where the works are expected to serve for many years in the future, bonds are issued for long terms. Payment for the bonds is provided for generally by payments to a sinking fund, the payments being so arranged as to extinguish the debt at the maturity of the bonds. In order to indicate approximately what the probable yearly cost to each municipality would be, should bonds be issued for the construction of the works and a sinking fund created to pay them at maturity, the following estimate has been prepared. The interest charges have been assumed to be 4 per cent., which appears to be the average rate of interest on town and city bonds issued under favorable conditions within the last few years, although such bonds would command a premium at the present time; and the sinking fund has been estimated at 1 per cent. annually, which would extinguish the debt in forty years.

Estimated yearly cost for interest and sinking fund, at 51

Dividing these two amounts between Salem and Peabody, on the basis of apportionment already given, the total yearly cost and the cost per capita tax to each municipality would be as follows:

Should the State create a district, and should it construct and operate the main sewer system herein proposed in the same manner as in the case of the metropolitan sewerage district, and charge the amounts for interest, sinking fund and maintenance to the city of Salem and the town of Peabody, a considerable saving would be made in the cost of interest and sinking fund to Salem and Peabody.

In the case of the metropolitan sewerage loan, the bonds bear interest at a rate of 3 per cent., but at the present time the rate of interest upon State bonds would probably be higher. Assuming that the rate of interest would be 3 per cent. (at which rate the bonds would command a premium at present), and that the payment to the sinking fund would be 11 per cent., as before, the annual cost to Salem and Peabody would be:

-

Estimated annual cost of interest and sinking fund, at 4

This would be at a rate of $2,200.58 per year less than if the towns raised the money themselves; or, in other words, the use of the credit of the State would reduce the yearly cost for interest and sinking fund by about 9 per cent.

The total cost and cost per capita to each municipality would then be as follows: