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The Solution To Pollution Is Not Dilution
...... The U.S. and Great Britain signed the Waterways Treaty on January 11, 1909. The pact recognized pollution as an international problem, and provided that boundary waters between the United States and Canada, or waters crossing the boundary "shall not be polluted on either side to the injury of health or property on the other." It foreshadowed the necessity for remedial measures and is considered the genesis of DWSD's Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Meanwhile, yearly typhoid epidemics reached a high point in 1912, prompting the U.S. Public Health service to mandate the disinfection of all water distributed to the Department's customers. Calcium hypochlorite was first used in 1913. It was replaced in 1916 by liquid chlorine, a more effective disinfectant. Disinfection had a dramatic impact. Typhoid deaths in Detroit reached a rate of 25 for every 100,000 people during the year prior to the introduction of liquid chlorine. The following year's death rate fell to less than half that amount, approximately 10 for every 100,000 people. Illness from waterborne organisms became negligible after the implementation of 24-hour monitoring of water quality by degreed chemists in 1917.
Because disinfection of drinking water was not considered a complete answer to water treatment, the first segment of the Detroit River Interceptor [[DRI) was built in 1912. The DRI intercepted sewage and discharged it below the system intake. At that time, the Department made plans to build the filtration plant in Water Works Park. In the meantime, an exhibit was set up near the Hurlbut Memorial Gate on East Jefferson where Detroiters were invited to compare filtered and unfiltered samples of drinking water. The clear filtered water was the hands-down choice over the off-colored, unfiltered samples. On December 2, 1923, the Department formally opened the largest filtration plant in the world...........
By the end of the '20s, the practice of channeling untreated wastewater into the river could no longer be tolerated. Pollution was exacerbated by Detroit's frantic pace of expansion and annexation from 1910-1926. The city was flirting with the one-million population mark while the auto industry roared. The Detroit Board of Water Commissioners [[BOWC) addressed the need for more treated water - created by development and annexation - in 1924 by authorizing construction of the Springwells Water Treatment Plant at an estimated $30 million. When fully completed in 1935, it was the largest self-contained water plant in the world; adding about 300 MGD to the overall system capacity.
After entering service, it was known for a short time as "the White Elephant of Springwells Street." The unflattering sobriquet was bestowed by those who perceived the plant's vast size as a wasteful and extravagant expression of a bygone era......
In 1925, the BOWC gave the go-ahead for construction of the Wastewater Treatment Plant - at the confluence of the Rouge and Detroit rivers - to deal with the flood of wastewater created by Detroit's industrial and urban development and a growing number of requests for additional services from suburban communities. Unfortunately, economic conditions created by the Great Depression halted construction in 1932. Construction would not start up again until 1936, after an infusion of money from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Public Works Administration. That $20 million allowed the Department to not only complete plant construction,but provided enough to finance the extension of the DRI to the treatment plant.
The Wastewater Treatment Plant entered service in February 1940 at a cost of $22,635,000 [[more than half spent to complete the DRI and the network of connecting mains). It was designed to provide primary treatment for 2.4 million people in Detroit, Gratiot Township [[Harper Woods), Grosse Pointe City, Grosse Pointe Farms, Grosse Pointe Park, Grosse Pointe Woods, Hamtramck, Highland Park, Redford Township, St. Clair Shores, Southfield Township and Warren Township. With modifications, the plant was expected to service the needs of a population of four million......
A 1935 city ordinance required the cost of operations and debt repayment [[$1,392,543 during the first 12 months) be raised by supplemental charges added to every bill issued by the BOWC. Detroiters paid 11 cents per thousand cubic feet of water and suburban communities paid an extra 21.61 cents per thousand cubic feet.
Post-war Development
When normal economic development returned after the end of World War II, new homes were often connected to lateral sewer mains laid in the 1920s because of a decline in new home construction during the Depression. The Great Depression also caused the brakes to be applied to the BOWC's liberal expansionist policy. L.G. Lenhardt - General Manager beginning in 1938 - was a product of the era's cautious approach to development. He held the Department to a course that mirrored Detroit's near-saturated state of development and proclaimed that the Department would concern itself with only taking care of what it already had. He advocated entry into the water and sewerage business by other government bodies - Wayne County, in particular - to serve needs created by suburban development.
The Department's conservative management style was radically transformed in 1956 with the arrival of Gerald J. Remus, the new Superintendent and Chief Engineer. Remus believed Detroit was up to the task of filling the role of water and wastewater services provider for the whole of metro Detroit. Under his direction, the Department returned to a policy of expansion with an aggression not seen since the end of the 19th century.......
However, by then the "window of opportunity" for annexing additional surrounding communities had long since been slammed shut. Instead, the DWSD's new expansionist policy fueled the growth of the suburban cities that had taken root during the DWSD's previous policy of "only taking care of what it already had".
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Originally Posted by
Detroitnerd
......Though it wasn't a city department, the Detroit United Railway had tremendous scope 100 years ago, running electric trains on Detroit city streets, and running lines out as far as Jackson, Pontiac, Port Huron, Toledo, even Cleveland. Due to a boom in road-building subsidies in the 1910s, their profitability declined, but Detroit inherited the city system and ran it for some time. Unfortunately, with the city only running the rail lines within the city, it altered the development of the metroplex forever..
Let me offer an example of how the DSR and the city of Detroit shot itself in the foot with its roadway and transit decisions that caused DSR streetcar service to the Macomb County communities of Baseline, Van Dyke and Center Line to end in 1932: