In the 1830s, the canal company fought for and won the right to ownership of the water contained in the canal's prism. Owning the water allowed them to sell it to manufacturers along the Georgetown level, who ran canal water through turbines or waterwheels as it passed through their factories and flowed into the Potomac below. Company records indicate that employees built gauges along these outlets, both to insure that enough water remained in the canal for navigation and to get paid for the amount of water taken by the Georgetown factories.