Monday, August 6, 2012

CULTURE: Water Supply for the Nation's Capital: A History

DC Historian Nelson Rimensnyder sat down with Water Citizen News and provided us with some of the history of drinking water in the District of Columbia.  A transcript of the video follows.




My name is Nelson Rimensnyder and I came to Washington in 1970 to work for the Congressional Research Service [at the Library of Congress], and I was there for about six months when they got a call from Charles Diggs, Representative from Michigan, who was about to become Chairman on the Committee of the District of Columbia. He wanted to talk to the DC government expert, someone at the Library who had done work on the history of the government of the District of Columbia and what kind of governments they had because the committee would be considering some sort of a major reorganization and the creation of a Home Rule, locally-elected government in the District of Columbia, the first such government in 100 years.



As part of that research I was asked to look into the water system of the city, how it developed, who was in charge of it, because that was one of the considerations of the reorganization. Should the water delivery system be transferred to the newly elected local government and not be a separate entity under the Corps of Engineers, which it had been since 1874?



I found out that right after the Civil War Congress was quite concerned about having a potable water system in the city because typhoid fever had been a major problem during the war with the troops in the city. A major development one that one of Lincoln's sons died because of the unpotable water that was even piped into the White House. Most of the water was coming from springs and wells that had become polluted over the years.



So in 1874 Congress put the Corps of Engineers in charge of developing a system. They created a three-member commissioner government, two members appointed appointed by the President and the third would be a general officer of the Corps of Engineers, who would be in charge of all of the infrastructure in the City of Washington and the District of Columbia. That was the beginning of the development of Washington's water system.



One of the first major projects was building a major conduit along what is now MacArthur Boulevard, which for many years was known as Conduit Road; developing reservoirs and the McMillan filtration plant, where water was filtered through sand and gravel and purified. Over the years other technologies, of course, have taken over.



Later on, about 15 years ago, a regional water authority was established. It was actually taken out of the District government, which was in charge of the actual billing and the setting of water rates - all that was transferred to a regional body. Under the old system the revenue from the water authority was paid into the General Fund of the District of Columbia. So the mayor and the city council could tap into those funds and use them for other purposes and not just have them dedicated to the maintenance and the improvements of the water system. 



Over the period of about 10 years Congress mandated that $50 million a year be set aside in a fund to upgrade the system; to essentially look into separating the water runoff system from the sewerage pipe system, which were one system, and look to developing a dual system so that when there were large storms and there was a lot of runoff,, that all the sewage would not have to be released into the Potomac. There was a major problem with the pollution of the Potomac River and there still is today.  That was typical when these systems were developed after the Civil War. It was not only the City of Washington, but most cities did not develop a dual system. The water runoff and the sewerage was all on one system.  That is a decision that local governments and water systems have to make; whether to develop a dual system or have large tunnels and store some of the run-off during these storms.



Unfortunately, the half a billion dollars that eventually was built up in this fund was diverted by the District of Columbia City Council and the Mayor and the other projects. So that money is no longer available. Now we are going to have build up a fund to fund some of these projects and updating the system through increased water rates.



So that’s my basic connection with the water system of the city and how I was involved.  I’m still interested, of course, as a citizen.  I’m not involved in the policy making.  There is talk now about how to do this, maybe not developing a whole new system, diverting some of the rainwater runoff into the groundwater and not having it run off, using green roofs and all that technology. Those are some of the ideas that are coming into place for that. So, that’s my basic knowledge of the water history of the District of Columbia.


Nelson Rimensnyder is a DC historian, preservationist, District voting rights activist, and candidate for DC Shadow Senate 2012.

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