|
View the h-dc Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in h-dc's August 2001 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in h-dc's August 2001 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the h-dc home page.
[from http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2001/01-08-22.htm -- the current issue of theMail] Water and Sewer Mark Richards, Dupont East, mark@bisconti.com In the recent floods, some District residents learned a bit about the water and sewer system. Heres some info, mostly drawn from Wilhelmus B. Bryans A History of the National Capital, from 1914. Until 1831, DC citizens got their water from "the rich gifts of nature of underground springs." At that time, water was brought to federal buildings from a spring two miles north of the capitol and from springs in Franklin Park. As the population grew and water supplies became tighter, some residents tapped into the federal flow. Until 1850, the sewers from the White House and federal buildings in that area drained onto the mall where the flow stagnated and made a marsh. (Now you know the real reason people imagined a "swamp" there.) In 1851, sewers were directed down 17th Street to the canal. The sewers from the post-office and patent office crossed 9th St. and dumped into a branch of the Tiber Creek. City leaders were concerned because the waterways were unfenced and people occasionally fell in. The city first built sewers for drainage purposes by enclosing open streams into brick conduits. In 1860, a third of Washington City sewage drained into the city canal through these surface drains. Luckily, Bryan reported, there was no outbreak of disease until the spring of 1857. . . . It was caused by poisonous gases from obstructed sewers and was confined in its extent to those in the building. Bryan says the relative good health of the city was because residents used the box rather than vault privies. Night soil was dumped away from population concentrations at 15th and R, NW, until in 1855 it was taken to 14th and Florida and Georgia Ave. to be treated for "agricultural purposes." (Yards in these areas may have mighty rich soil!) Between 1853 and 1863, the Washington Aqueduct System -- composed of a conduit, two sedimentation reservoirs, and water mains -- was constructed. Montgomery C. Meigs of the US Army Corps of Engineers was chief engineer. The total cost was about three and one-half million dollars, but problems with getting approval for funding, malaria, the Civil War, etc. delayed construction. The Aqueduct System was expected to last 200 years, but capacity was rapidly exceeded. We can thank "Boss" Shepherd was installing sewage services to DC residents. From 1871 to 1873, he and the Board of Public Works built 80 miles of sewers, the B Street Canal and Tiber Creek were covered, and the open trench know as the James Creek Canal was provided to carry sewage from South Capitol to the Anacostia River. The Army Corps added the McMillan Park Reservoir and the Washington City Tunnel (10 meters in diameter and 4 miles long) between 1882 and 1902. In 1905, a slow-sand water-filtration method was added at the McMillan Reservoir, and additional improvements were continually made. In 1918 the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) was formed after DC residents had started complaining about fouling streams within the Nations Capital by waste from Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties (http://www.wssc.dst.md.us/about/history.html). Over the years, a regional system was developed. According to Dr. Myron Uman, until 1938 when the Blue Plains treatment plant (http://www.weta.org/potomac/regions/region8/detail7.html) was completed (for DC and MD suburbs), raw sewage was dumped into the rivers. Even after that, the system was overburdened and raw sewage was and is still dumped into the rivers from time to time. Even so, conditions are better now than before. Uman said that in the 1970s treatment technology was improved and recreational boating and bass fish returned to the river. By the early 1980s, bottom vegetation returned and fish populations increased. Matthew Gilmore H-DC list co-editor, web editor dc-edit@mail.h-net.msu.edu http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~dclist/ [list website] http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/lists/subscribe.cgi?list=H-DC [subscribe to H-DC] Remember to check http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lm&list=h-dc for past list messages.
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|