Tacoma's $700,000 Water Deal Springs a Leak — and the Taxpayers Ask Who Pays
The city bought a water and light plant that delivers a fraction of what it promised. Now a suit is threatened, a superintendent's job looks 'cut and dried,' and a ratepayer on the outskirts wants to know why he must pay for water he cannot get.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
TACOMA, July 13. — [Special.] — Arrangements have been made with the light and water company for $700,000, for its failure to furnish water upon the terms on which the plant was bought, and it may be that the agitation up there will produce an investigation and reopen the entire light and water purchase transaction, now completed. The object of the proposed suit is simply to recover damages for the shortage in the supply. The water company advertised in the Herald something like ten million gallons per day to be furnished, but the board of public works examined and found only a small fraction of that amount per day.
A strong effort is being made to knock out George H. Hollidge for the position of superintendent of the water and light systems. He is a candidate under the ordinance recently passed empowering the mayor to appoint a man to that position. Hollidge made a fight on the purchase of the water plant, and kept it up until a few days before the election came off. Then he bolted. At that time he said there was no use trying to prevent the steal. Now it is asserted that the scheme to make him superintendent of the works was cut and dried at the time. Besides, if there is to be a superintendent of light and water, the board of public works will have to go, in all probability.
A taxpayer who does not use city water has sent the following to the Tacoma bureau of the POST-INTELLIGENCER: "The citizens of Tacoma are going to have a new deal sprung on them. The board of public works proposes next year to make all the property holders located along the water and light route, and those that can't get a supply at present from either plant, pay for those that have all the benefits. This is another scheme to make those pay that don't get any of the benefits and luxuries promised when the city limits were extended and the water and light plants were purchased. When they succeed in getting this done by direct tax on all assessable property, they then propose to reduce the water rates to those getting a supply at the expense of those that don't get it and can't get it. If the plants are paying expenses and interest, as the board says they are doing, and earning a surplus, why advocate this new piece of robbery on those unfortunate outlying property and lot holders? Probably it is to supply more funds to keep up high salaries and more superintendents from the unsuspecting thousands of lot holders in the extended city limits."
“This is another scheme to make those pay that don't get any of the benefits and luxuries promised when the city limits were extended and the water and light plants were purchased.”
Tacoma's 1894 fight over what a municipal water plant actually delivered — and who shouldered the bill for the neighborhoods it never reached — is the same argument that runs through utility-rate cases and annexation disputes today. Then as now, the people on the edge of the city paid in and got nothing back, and the answer from the board was a new superintendent's salary.
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