The Great Tacoma Water Flimflam
A look back at the 1890 council scandal that left the city with a mountain of debt and a useless water 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.
According to the official records, nine men in the city council were responsible for the purchase of the Clover Creek water system for $1,750,000. The record of the lawsuit in 1890, in which the city tried to get out of the water deal into which it had been flimflammed, shows the nefarious deal in every detail. It tells the story of how the scheme was put through and reveals facts that were not published at the time. Extracts from the testimony show that not one of the nine councilmen who voted to saddle upon the city an enormous debt and a worse than useless water system ever saw the property. The record states that not one of the nine councilmen knew whether the water system would serve the purpose or not; not one of them cared. They knew that nearly a million dollars of the city’s money was being paid without value, without consideration. The story reads like a gold brick tale in which the city was the victim. Charges of attempted and successful bribery were openly made, and while several attempts were made to reduce the price, the organization of the opposition was too much for those fighting the deal. Today, all Tacoma has to show for what these nine men did is an enormous debt and a bad-smelling, filthy, disease-laden water supply.
“The story reads like a gold brick tale in which the city was the victim.”
Tacoma’s long history of grappling with public infrastructure and corporate influence continues today, as the city navigates the complex costs of utility management. This 1904 retrospective serves as a reminder that the tension between civic investment and private profiteering has defined the city’s development for over a century.
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