The Dangerous Sewer Project at Rainier and Bash
In a desperate bid for political patronage before the election, the City Council authorized a controversial sewer project that threatens the city's water supply at Lake Washington.
To maintain political support and spend as much money as possible before the upcoming election, the Democratic city council has ordered an expensive sewer opened on Bash and Rainier streets. The project is projected to take two years, but it has the immediate effect of directing the raw sewage of a densely populated district directly into Lake Washington, only a few hundred feet from the intake point for the city's drinking water supply.
“It would have had the effect of running all the sewerage of a densely populated district right into Lake Washington in one solid mass.”
Public works projects being rushed through for political gain is a story as old as Seattle itself, though rarely with such dire environmental consequences for the municipal water source as this 1894 incident.
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