The City That Forgot to Flush: Seattle’s Shameful Sewer Crisis
As the population surges toward 40,000, an editorial warns that neglecting public health infrastructure is a 'crime' waiting for a deadly summer.
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.
Seattle is becoming a great city. The period of doubtful growth has been passed and the period of rapid and substantial development has been reached. Past strides which seemed great enough when they were made now appear insignificant when compared with the greater strides of the future.
The most important work which the city government should undertake at once is that of providing a proper system of sewerage. Some months ago this subject was freely discussed and an elaborate plan for draining the city was submitted to the council, but as yet nothing tangible has been done toward the correction of the evils which are acknowledged to exist.
That the matter of sewerage has been shamefully neglected in the past, nobody doubts. That it should receive prompt attention, everybody admits. Yet the winter is rapidly passing and nothing is being done. Another summer is approaching, and unless radical measures are taken, it will bring with it disease and death.
The condition of certain portions of the water front and the lower portion of the city is absolutely shocking, and in no climate on earth could such accumulations of filth as are there fail to breed disease. The memory of the last summer should spur the city government to such activity that the warm months of 1890 will find in Seattle a clean and wholesome city. To neglect the duty devolving upon the city officials in this important matter would be nothing less than a crime.
This 1890 editorial captures the tension between rapid urbanization and civic infrastructure that still defines Seattle today. Just as residents then feared 'disease and death' from neglected sewers, modern Seattleites face similar anxieties about aging underground utilities and housing density outpacing public services.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.