The Great Sluicing Failure
A municipal engineering project designed to clear the Union Pacific tunnel construction site ends in a clogged pipe and embarrassing failure.
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 city has fallen down in its plans to sluice the water from the Union Pacific tunnel and the city's part of the job will have to be done over. This morning everything was ready to start sluicing the ground into the gulch and the ground was thrown into the pipe and the water turned on. The dirt stuck and clogged the pipe and the scheme was a failure. The water furnished by the city would not do the work. Superintendent Whitney has been in charge of the water proposition and Commissioner McGregor was very much disturbed over the result today. 'It is the city's fault entirely,' said the commissioner.
“The dirt stuck and clogged the pipe and the scheme was a failure.”
Public works debacles are as much a part of Tacoma's history as its rapid development. This incident serves as a humorous early-twentieth-century reminder that municipal infrastructure projects have rarely gone exactly to plan.
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