The Muck in Our Pipes
A two-day investigation reveals that Tacoma’s municipal water supply, sourced from Clover Creek, is contaminated by livestock waste and agricultural runoff.
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.
The citizens of Tacoma are drinking today the filthiest water used in any city of the United States. It is water impregnated by offal and other refuse of nauseating character, coming from barnyards, pigsties, chicken yards, and outhouses along the open drainage ditch known as 'Clover Creek.' Even after passing through the city's so-called 'filter' at the head of the flume, it retains these nasty ingredients and partially dissolved refuse. I spent two days of this week along Clover Creek, investigating the creek foot by foot for three miles above the city's flume. I saw horses and cows wading, swimming, and defecating in the stream. I found pigsties and cow barns on its banks. At one point, the creek flows through a front yard, where a plank is thrown across for a footway—an ideal place for children to play in the water. I saw geese paddling, and in every field, the banks were choked with the tracks of animals and layers of muck. This is the water that the city purchased for $1,480,000 in 1893, and which continues to be the primary supply for our homes.
“I felt guilty enough when I saw what an awful mess I had raised and hastily waded ashore... It smelled of disease and death.”
This 1905 exposé highlights the early, messy struggle for public infrastructure control in Tacoma. The 'Clover Creek' water system was a notorious example of a boondoggle purchase that left citizens literally drinking the waste of upstream farms, a reminder that the city's foundational utilities were often born from private-sector greed and public-health crises.
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