The Fight Over Who Owns Seattle's Water

The project for the development of the power of Cedar river and for supplying the city with the pure water of that stream by a gravity system has progressed so far that yesterday E. H. Ammidown and F. H. Osgood, representing the company which has the undertaking in hand, announced to the fire and water committee of the city council that they were ready to enter into a contract to deliver to the city so many millions of gallons of water independent of the methods of construction of a plant, or to deliver water through a system built under plans furnished by the city engineer. The proposition seemed to meet with favor from the committee, and City Engineer Thomson was instructed to prepare details as to the present system and the system proposed.

When such a statement shall have been submitted, the committee will report to the council, and any one will have opportunity to give figures on a plan to supply the city with water. The plan would offer an inducement to outside capital to come in and look for returns in rental received from consumers of water, the city fixing the rates and reserving the right to buy in the plant after a period of fifteen or twenty years. It is thought that a private corporation could supply water so as to compete with the city at the present rate and when, with the increase of consumption due to increase of population, the ratio of expense decreased, it could still better afford to do so.

City Engineer Thomson said that under the gravity system one thing necessary would be to have a good reservoir at this end of the line. There were two questions of engineering, first, the form of the reservoir, and second, the form of the conduit. The location was already fixed. Two pumping stations, he thought, would be necessary, for the small circles now known as the Kenton hill and Queen Anne districts. He thought he could have the figures ready for submission to the committee in a few weeks.

Mr. Thomson, in answer to a question from Dr. Chapman, stated that the trouble with the Holly pump was that it had been made to lift water only 200 feet, while it was required to force a stream [blank] feet. From the tenor of Mr. Thomson's remarks it was evident that he thought the city had been given by far the worst of the bargain when it bought the pump. He compared it with the old Dow pump, which had been in use twelve years when bought by the city, and the inference was plain that the Holly was overloaded and hardly capable of doing the work forced upon it.

The proposal indicates that the elaborate system outlined by Kenezette Williams in 1890, looking to Swan lake as an impounding reservoir for the water of Cedar river and the construction of a conduit from there down the Cedar river valley to the city, may soon be carried out.