Is Tacoma’s Water Supply Making People Sick?
A reporter’s investigation reveals that farm runoff and sewage are flowing directly into the city's filtration system.
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.
With the object of ascertaining the present condition of the source of the city's water supply, a representative of The Times went out yesterday afternoon to the filtering plant located between Lakeview and Parkland. As far as the filtering plant itself is concerned, not the slightest fault could be found with it. Everything there was clean and in good order, but it cannot be said that the same conditions prevail between the filters and the springs in the hills which are the source from which the present supply of water is drawn. The water comes to the plant through Clover Creek, which runs through pasture lands where barns are situated close to the banks. It is common talk in the neighborhood that the creek is made a dumping place for all sorts of refuse. William T. Smith, the night man in charge of the filters, confirmed the report: 'The farmers above here send everything they don't want down to us.' After passing through screens, the water enters a wooden flume to the city reservoir. In some places, this flume is buried, and surface water from nearby ravines can easily filter through the wooden planks, raising questions about whether these conditions are responsible for the increased number of typhoid fever cases in Tacoma.
“The farmers above here send everything they don't want down to us.”
Public anxiety over water quality is a recurring theme in Tacoma’s civic history, echoing modern debates about infrastructure maintenance and the vulnerability of regional watersheds to contamination. While the 1904 fear was typhoid, the underlying civic argument about how much effort the city owes its residents to protect their basic health remains constant.
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