Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 5.3
Construction of the Cedar River water supply in 1899. Source : University of Washington
Libraries, Special Collections, UW 27484.
confl ate technical and social progress while purportedly staying above the
fray of partisan municipal politics. His work on Seattle's physical land-
scape would perfect nature's designs and, in doing so, improve society,
much like Colonel George Waring Jr., the vaunted nineteenth-century U.S.
sewer expert, and William Mulholland, the famed municipal engineer
who brought water from the Owens Valley in eastern California to Los
Angeles. 63 At the turn of the twentieth century, Thomson's most pressing
engineering problems for Seattle included water supply, sewerage, and
transportation. And he recognized that they were all related by the com-
mon element of water.
With respect to sewers, the fi rst formal system was initiated in the city
in 1875 with wood troughs and boxes, while the use of more durable
materials began in 1883. 64 Three years before Thomson would become
city engineer, the municipality hired Waring to produce a report for the
city on sewerage. Waring advised the municipal government to build a
sewer system for sanitary wastes and create a surface drainage system
for stormwater, but municipal offi cials balked at the cost and design of
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