City Watercourse channel, boosting the Poddle's flow considerably (it constituted the majority of the flow for much of the year). Municipal water supply Development The river provided an early source of clean and drinkable water for the city, as the Liffey was tidal within the city area, and undrinkable, and the other major south-side watercourse, the Camac, was too far from the main settlement (although there may have been a channel, sometimes called the Camac Millrace, diverting some flow from it), while the Steyne River was too small. By the 13th century, the water supply was inadequate and the residents of Dublin allocated a budget to secure more supply and applied to the royal officers. On 29 April 1244, the leading official in Ireland, the Justiciar, Maurice Fitzgerald, directed the Sheriff of Dublin to appoint a panel of municipal freemen to find a suitable source of water and a way to bring it to Dublin. This writ was backed by a threat of arrest for anyone obstructing the project. Following the civic inquisition, as it was called, a deal was made, in 1244–1245, with the Abbey of St Thomas, to use their Dodder-boosted Poddle supply for broader city purposes. Near the point where the abbey had diverted the Poddle, but a little further south, the flow was divided, and a new, city-owned channel, the City Watercourse, was formed, carrying the water towards the James' Street area, where a storage basin was built. Initially, the water was distributed by way of surface channels in Thomas Street and High Street, with a fountain added in Cornmarket in 1308; the supply to Dublin Castle may have been already then, and certainly was later, carried by lead piping. The basin was renewed around 1670, and pipes of lead, and later also timber, were laid into the city. A more modern and larger reservoir (9.5 million-gallon capacity, three months' supply at that time), also built at a higher elevation, increasing the pressure in the pipes, was built as the final form of the City Basin in 1721, as the population had risen from 60,000 in the 1680s to around 120,000. The resulting flow of water supplied what was called the Pipe Water Establishment, a special division of Dublin Corporation, for centuries. Maintenance and problems Different persons were over time entrusted with the task of overseeing the water flow towards Dublin, such as one John Pylle