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

Natural or artificial?

■ The Káposztásmegyer waterworks is now an industrial monument

in Lukács utca on the Buda side. In preparation for the construction of the large- capacity waterworks designed to supply Pest, a unified regulation of water conduit systems was prepared. When calculating the rates, the number of utility animals in the household was to be taken into account, together with the size of the garden or backyard, and the meters were to be installed at the expense of the municipality. For unfiltered water, half the regular price was payable, and discounts were given to public offices and humanitarian organisations. Those polluting the water faced heavy fines or imprisonment for 3 to 15 days. But the populace grumbled about the rigid attitude taken by the authorities:"... it is not to be denied that the current system has by now become ill-suited to the task of answering the demands made by the ever increasing population oh a large city. But even before the years-long preliminary work that must precede the construction oh a new waterworks is completed, there is no reason why householders now supplied with poor quality, unpurihied water at steep prices should not be obliged, at the cost oh giving them rates wavers, to obtain Pasteur-type water-hilters. ’’

Director of Water Supplies János Wein, who had demonstrated his abilities in two cities so far, was commissioned to design a permanent waterworks to be built outside Káposztásmegyer, and he delivered the plans asked of him in two months. The location settled on answered the demands of natural water filtering, a fact acknowledged by Wein in the following words: "We have two sources oh water here, one being

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