Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Natural or artificial?

the water seeping tjrom the Danube unstoppably into the layer of gravel, whose filtering capacity is enhanced by the fact that the shoreline here is either concave or straight, which is why no deposits of mud are formed. The other source is the spring water welling up unimpeded in Dunakeszi; this water is in evidence everywhere along the west coast of the local lake and can be easily trapped into." (That the acquisition of the area was not an easy undertaking is shown by the fact that the investor Budapest, the proprietor Újpest and the lessee Sándor Károlyi were embroiled in ten years of litigation.)

The national committee in charge of the permanent waterworks on the left bank was convened for the first time on 5 October 1884. Chaired by Károly Gerlóczy, the committee counted among its numbers representatives delegated by the Board of Public Works and the municipality. Joining the negotiations was Vilmos Zsigmondy on the part of the BPW, which had espoused the cause of artificial filtering, while the municipality of Budapest, which supported the idea of natural filtering, delegated Professor József Szabó, Mór Nászai (Nasztl) and Chief Medical Officer Gergely Patru- bány. At the conclusion of the talks, the BPW commissioned Lindley to prepare the designs of the permanent waterworks, the municipality of Budapest invited further experts to participate, following which it proceeded to "invite tenders, at its own expense, for the design of a waterworks to be equipped with artificial filters." Entering the competition were a German and an English engineer as well as Lindley. It soon came to light that the water supply of Budapest could safely be based upon natural filtering, which is why Wein's earlier suggestions were favoured in spite of the fact that Lindley had been awarded first prize in the competition.

The final impetus to taking the decision to extend the piped-water supply system was given by the spring cholera outbreak of 1892 when the BPW was obliged to approve, after years of foot-dragging, the construction of a natural-filter based water purifying plant. Work started under the supervision of chief engineer Mihály Kajlinger (1860—1924) on i April 1893, and the first unit yielding 30 thousand cubic metres of water was put into operation on 28 July the same year. The unit was gradually built out according to a predetermined schedule, until it reached a delivery capacity of 170,000 cubic metres with four wells and pump houses providing the water supply, which was then carried by a 1,200 millimetre main laid from the source to the Western Station. In January of 1894 another set of wells was opened on the Palota Island, whose yield was conveyed to the riverbank by a pipe set in a tunnel running beneath the riverbed. Soon the second main was laid with further wells being bored, and on 17 April 1895 work on the third phase of the Megyer Waterworks was started.

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