The Great Tacoma Water Grift

The city of Tacoma had long been in the clutches of the Tacoma Light and Water Company, which was furnishing bad and insufficient water from Clover Creek at high rates. The people, growing restive, demanded a new waterworks system which would furnish pure water and would belong to the city. This was in 1890. The agitation grew rapidly and threatened ruin to the Tacoma Light and Water Company. Its principal owner, C.B. Wright, and the local directors became alarmed, and a game was put up by which the water company made a pretense of improving the water supply by leasing Clear Creek and buying Maplewood Springs. The people thought that at last something was to be done, and the agitation in council and out of it in favor of a new system gradually cooled down. After a year of inaction, the outcry arose again. A commission recommended taking water from the Mashell River, but by a little juggling, the mayor elected was a henchman of C.B. Wright, Huson by name. A subservient city council was also in power, and six months more dragged away. Finally, Wright concluded it would be wisest to sell out their Clover Creek system. Wright demanded $1,700,000 for his light plant and water system. A vigorous storm of protests arose among well-informed citizens who declared that the waterworks system was not worth more than $500,000. But the water company had so thoroughly fooled the people that they voted to buy the Clover Creek water system at the figures set by Wright. It soon dawned upon the voters that they had been made the victims of a gigantic confidence game. More than ten years have elapsed since the great waterworks crime was committed, and the people still deal with a decaying flume, small pipes, and insufficient supplies of dirty water.