Cleveland Water History - Historical Overview

While water has guided the development of the Greater Cleveland area, it almost kept Cleveland from becoming a city. Founded in a swampy area on the shores of Lake Erie, the settlement that later became Cleveland was plagued by malaria, which wiped out almost all the early settlers. More came, however, drawn in part by the easy availability of water from Lake Erie and the rivers and creeks that flow into it.

The city's population stood at 57 in 1810, and wells were the source of water. Around that time, an individual named Benhu Johnson provided what was the first commercial supply of water; in times of drought, he would deliver about 50 gallons of Lake Erie water in two barrels for 25 cents. Cleveland soon outgrew this idyllic system, as the city's population had risen to 17,000 by 1840. The Ohio-Erie Canal, a major engineering feat for the times that ended in Cleveland, gave the city a boost as people moved to the area to build it, and then stayed. The wells, rivers and creeks that had served the city for the past decades were still sufficient, but just barely.

The Cleveland water system is now well into its second century of evolution. Here, construction of the 135-million gallon Baldwin Reservoir begins early in the twentieth century... with wagons, not bulldozers.

Seeing advantage in the business of supplying the water Cleveland's growing population and economy required, a certain Philo Scovill organized the Cleveland Water Company with several associates in 1833. This private company, however, lacked the resources to tackle a project as huge as a waterworks serving the entire community. City council saw public interest in a stable water supply, and spent $35 to sink a public well at Public Square in 1840. In the following decade, the city built a network of wells and cisterns to serve its citizens, but by 1850 the necessity for a better, more organized system of water distribution became clear. No entrepreneurs were willing to put up the private capital needed, so in 1853 city council authorized the expenditure of $400,000 for a centralized water system.

The father of Cleveland's waterworks was T.R. Scowden, the chief engineer of the city who pushed for and designed the first system. His proposal, which included a plan for sewers as well, had the goal of providing 'pure and wholesome water to the inhabitants' of Cleveland, a goal that has been a guiding principle of the Division of Water ever since.

Work started on a project that appears modest by today's standards: one pumping station, a 5 million-gallon reservoir at Kentucky and Prospect streets, a 300-foot, 50-inch diameter pipeline from the lake shore west of the Cuyahoga River to the pump station, and another 11 miles of distribution pipe from the reservoir. After several revisions caused by engineering obstacles such as quicksand, and at a cost of about $500,000, Cleveland's first water system began operating on September 24, 1856. This system delivered about 38,000 gallons per day.

The system's first pumps would be no match for the powerful pumps of today.

The planners of the first portion of the water system, however, could not envision the effect that the Civil War would have on Cleveland. The war led to rapid industrialization and population growth, and as the city grew, its borders expanded and suburbs began to appear. At the same time, greater availability of water caused people to use more, a trend accelerated by the appearance of flush toilets and kitchens that used piped water. Yet just as water use expanded rapidly during the post-Civil War period, unfortunately so did the volume of pollution entering Lake Erie. Modern sewage treatment techniques were unknown, and the citizens of Cleveland began complaining about the quality of their water, which was drawn mainly from Lake Erie at increasingly polluted points near the shore.

More water, cleaner water and a much broader distribution network became necessary. The best solution, again proposed by chief engineer T.R. Scowden, was to draw water from far offshore where the water remained clean, an objective that required building a tunnel for over five miles under the lake bed that would end in a collection point, called a "crib". The work began in 1867 and took seven years of dangerous toil. The 87-foot diameter crib was also a home and a navigational aid as it was equipped with a lighthouse and a house for the lighthouse keeper. This stoic individual typically spent nine lonely months at his post, perhaps gazing longingly across the lake at the rapidly rising Cleveland skyline.

Building on the potential of the new crib, the Kinsman Reservoir was completed in 1883 and the Fairmount Reservoir was completed in 1885. The Kentucky Reservoir, just 30 years old, was taken out of service; it became an emergency reservoir for fighting fires. The water system was now supplying more than 10 million gallons of water per day through some 125 miles of distribution mains, both representing enormous jumps from the figures a short 30 years earlier.

The system's growth created administrative challenges as well. In 1856, users paid a one-time charge of $3 to have a licensed plumber tap into the system and an annual fee of $5 per dwelling, with surcharges for additional facilities. Yet expansion meant a need for capital, and questions about equitable distribution of costs. Metering began in 1870, and the additional revenue provided by more exact billing turned out to be essential as Cleveland continued to grow and demand an ever greater supply of water.

Growth continued to outstrip the capacity of the water supply system. Moreover, one crib far out in the lake was insufficient and the old intakes near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, which had become the city's de facto sewer, were too close to the pollution the growing city generated. Between 1890 and 1916, the system was therefore greatly expanded, centered around the construction of two intake tunnels that ran under the bed of Lake Erie for several miles to points farther out in the lake where the water was still pure. These were the days when men and mules did risky underground work that massive machines do today. Pockets of explosive, poisonous gas and the soft clay under Lake Erie made the work extremely dangerous, and frequent explosions and cave-ins claimed the lives of dozens of workers. In fact, compensation to the families of those who lost their lives was a prominent component of the expenditures on the water system during these years.

Yet out of the tragedy arose new inventions to eliminate the hazards. One of them was the "safety hood' invented by Garrett A. Morgan, an innovator in the field of safety devices and a Cleveland resident (See Garret Morgan Biography from History Index Page). A gas explosion in 1916 left a group of workers trapped in a tunnel beneath Lake Erie, and 10 men died because of the fumes while attempting to rescue them. Morgan was called to the scene with his safety hood, and he and other volunteers used the device to successfully rescue several of the trapped workers. Morgan's safety hood, the forerunner of the modern gas mask, has gone on to save countless lives in fields from fire fighting to law enforcement. Cleveland honored Morgan's genius and courage in 1991 by rededicating the renovated Division Avenue Water Works with his name.

Risk lurked in the early water system in other forms as well. Typhoid fever and cholera often broke out in Cleveland, a result of society's insufficient knowledge of water treatment processes at the time and the growing amount of pollution in Lake Erie as the city became more industrial. Science was on the move at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, and Cleveland began adding chlorine to its water in 1911, and began testing the water daily in 1913. Filtration began in 1917; the Division Avenue Water Treatment Plant, built on the site of the older Division pumping station, opened with the latest in water filtration and treatment technology. The effect of the new treatment technologies was soon clear. In 1900, the death rate from typhoid fever per 100,000 persons was 110, but dropped to merely one in 1930.

The 1920's were an age of prosperity in Cleveland, and the city expanded accordingly. Immigrants poured into the area, and Cleveland was one of the 10 largest cities in the United States. Demand for water continued to increase rapidly, and the water system was expanded to respond. An important result was the addition in 1925 of the Baldwin Water Treatment Plant and its 135-million-gallon underground reservoir. Carved out of solid rock and the largest covered reservoir in the world when completed, the reservoir helped Baldwin meet the growing needs of the downtown area, the east side and communities to the east. Baldwin was engineered to allow newly built facilities to incorporate existing infrastructure. To feed its enormous reservoir, Baldwin was linked to the Kirtland Pumping Station, whose powerful steam-driven intake pumps represented the apex of technology at the time, and in turn to the crib finished in 1904. The Fairmount Reservoir became a staging area for raw water coming from the Kirtland Pumping Station, and a pump station was attached to bolster supply to Baldwin. All the while, the distribution network grew in scope and complexity as the Greater Cleveland area expanded into the farmland and forest surrounding it.

Early Steam-driven Engines at the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant

The stock market crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression put a temporary brake on both the city's growth and demand for water. While the Parma Reservoir was completed in 1934 to serve the communities to the south and west of Cleveland, other projects were delayed or canceled, and water use dropped off. By the end of the 1930's, however, water use was on the rise again and Cleveland's water system was bumping up against its limitations. The citizens of Greater Cleveland demanded more water, particularly the inhabitants of suburban areas who typically suffered severe water shortages and pressure problems during the summer. Yet a full-scale expansion effort had to wait until the end of World War II. During the war, city politicians such as Emil Crown, a modern-day T.R. Scowden who served as Director of Public Utilities from the mid-1930's until the mid-1950's, worked miracles to obtain required materials from the War Production Board, which rationed items such as steel pipe. Yet their efforts only kept the system functioning; water ran short and water and pressure dropped in the summer, but the war came first. Questions of money and equitable distribution of costs also had to be worked out.

Immediately after the war ended, Cleveland geared up for a massive water system expansion that resulted in the construction of first the Nottingham Water Treatment Plant in 1951 and the Crown Water Treatment Plant, named after the legendary Emil Crown, in 1958. The city was at its peak, and the scale of the water system reflected it. The system served 44,000 people in 1860, but now served 1.6 million. Moreover, it now had four intakes stretching between 2.5 and 4 miles into Lake Erie, compared to the single 300-foot intake completed in 1856. These intakes were between two to three times larger than the original intake. Reservoir capacity in 1963 was over 233 million gallons, compared to 5 million in 1856, and the water was distributed through over 3,700 miles of mains, compared to 11 in the beginning.

The system had reached maturity, but maturity and the system's complexity brought with them a need for innovative solutions to the problems they imposed. Nottingham and Crown were representative of the disagreements about rates and service between Cleveland and its suburbs that began coming to the fore as Cleveland's growth leveled off in the 1960's.

Planning for Nottingham, which primarily serves Cleveland's southeast suburbs, began in 1925, but this plant was not completed until nearly 30 years later. A main reason was the debate on financing that grew out of the differing viewpoints of Cleveland and the suburbs. Crown was built to serve Cleveland's expanding western suburbs, which periodically considered building their own separate water system because of the water shortages they experienced until Crown began operating. In sum, the growth of the Greater Cleveland area had been straining the ability of the status quo to meet all residents' needs. Crown and Nottingham were two important steps Cleveland took to improve suburban service, a process that continues today.

The Filtration gallery at Garrett A. Morgan in the 1960's.

Cleveland's changing demographic and economic picture after the 1950's necessitated changes to the water system's administration. The heavy industry that had made Cleveland a wealthy and powerful city also made it a challenging place to live. Beginning in the 1960's, the city was saddled with the enormous cost of cleaning up Lake Erie, polluted by the city's growth. Many residents left for the suburbs, and then some of the industries themselves left for lower cost sites elsewhere in the U.S. and overseas. Water consumption rose in the suburbs, but dropped in metropolitan Cleveland. Many of the same issues regarding the equitable distribution of costs that had hindered the much needed Nottingham plant boiled over into a protracted political struggle between the city and the suburbs over water from 1975 to 1980.

Moreover, the inflation that began its upward spiral in the 1960's and the unwillingness of users to approve higher rates made funds increasingly less available, leading to creeping neglect of Cleveland's superb water system because it is a user-funded utility that does not rely on tax dollars for financial support. Capital expenditures on the water system averaged under $10 million annually during the 1970's, which was insufficient to maintain the system, much less expand it. The water system was in desperate need of refurbishment three decades after reaching its peak, but it was this need that united the city and its suburban customers in a fair agreement covering the supply and price of water.

The larger water towers of today can hold nearly as much water as the first reservoir built in 1856.

The effort to rehabilitate the neglected water system began in 1982 as an outgrowth of new water service agreements hammered out between the City of Cleveland and the suburbs from 1975-1980. Dubbed the Capital Improvement Program, or CIP, the effort continues today and entails a broad range of projects to improve and strengthen the system. These include upgrading of the four treatment plants, which in 1982 had been in service from 26 to 65 years. For example, the Division Water Treatment Plant was completely renovated before being renamed the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant. Improvements and additions to the system of water mains to raise reliability and water quality are another key component of the CIP, as are the addition of new technologies and equipment for controlling distribution and guaranteeing water supply quality in the face of strict federal regulations. For instance, the CIP resulted in the upgrading of advanced control technology, the SCADA system, at the Supervisory Control Center in Parma Heights, which opened in 1967. SCADA helps highly skilled personnel make distribution as efficient as possible and respond quickly to emergencies. Altogether, the CIP is budgeted at over $900 million through 2008, and is positioning Greater Cleveland to successfully meet its water demands well into the next century.

The CIP, however, is not being achieved through sharp increases in water rates. Although rates have risen somewhat, Cleveland water remains among the least expensive in the nation, while also rating among the highest in quality. A key factor supporting the low cost of Cleveland water is the Cleveland Division of Water's management structure. As the CIP began to take shape, the Division of Water and City government realized that bold, new management practices would be needed to get the work done without placing a heavy financial burden on the system's customers.

Efficiency is the watchword of Cleveland's water system today. Modern management principles have been joined with advanced technology to speed administrative work, meter reading and billing, repair time, and treatment and distribution. Today, the Division of Water gets more work done more cost efficiently than at any time in its history. And remember Benhu Johnson, the man who sold Lake Erie water by the barrel? He distributed water at a cost of about two gallons for a penny, but today the Division of Water distributes a far cleaner, healthier water at the price of about 15 gallons for a penny. The residents of Greater Cleveland can depend on their excellent water system, today and tomorrow.

Cleveland water costs less per gallon today than it did 150 years ago, and consistently ranks among the highest in quality in the United States.

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Cleveland Annual Report Book For 1853-1872. It is unknown what caused the fire damage to the bottom of this volume.

The following pages were taken directly from a volume of the Cleveland Annual Report for 1853-1872. These pages are actual scans of the report submitted by Theodore R. Scowden, to the Mayor and Council of Cleveland proposing his plan for the construction of the Cleveland Water System.

Mr. Scowden has been considered the "Father of the Cleveland Water System". In the early 1850's, the Cleveland City Council had appointed a committee to assess the water needs of Cleveland due to problems the city faced with supply and cleanliness. The committee called upon Mr. Scowden, a Hydraulic Engineer working for the Cincinnati Water Works, to help with their assessment and calculations. The committee was so impressed with his knowledge and skill that in a report submitted to the Cleveland City Council, they recommended "without hesitation", that Mr. Scowden be appointed to the task of designing and building Cleveland's first Water system.

Baldwin Resevoir Construction Photographs (1914 - 1919)
(Click on images to view larger version)

Garrett Augustus Morgan (1877 - 1963)

Among his inventions was an early traffic signal, that greatly improved safety on America's streets and roadways. Indeed, Morgan's technology was the basis for modern traffic signal systems and was an early example of what we know today as Intelligent Transportation Systems.

The Inventor's Early Life. The son of former slaves, Garrett A. Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky on March 4, 1877. His early childhood was spent attending school and working on the family farm with his brothers and sisters. While still a teenager, he left Kentucky and moved north to Cincinnati, Ohio in search of opportunity.

Although Morgan's formal education never took him beyond elementary school, he hired a tutor while living in Cincinnati and continued his studies in English grammar.

In 1895, Morgan moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he went to work as a sewing machine repair man for a clothing manufacturer. News of his proficiency for fixing things and experimenting traveled fast and led to numerous job offers from various manufacturing firms in the Cleveland area.

In 1907, Morgan opened his own sewing equipment and repair shop. It was the first of several businesses he would establish. In 1909, he expanded the enterprise to include a tailoring shop that employed 32 employees. The new company turned out coats, suits and dresses, all sewn with equipment that Morgan himself had made.

In 1920 Morgan moved into the newspaper business when he established the Cleveland Call. As the years went on, he became a prosperous and widely respected business man, and he was able to purchase a home and an automobile. Indeed it was Morgan's experience while driving along the streets of Cleveland that led to the invention the nation's first patented traffic signal.

The Garrett Morgan Traffic Signal. The first American- made automobiles were introduced to U.S. consumers shortly before the turn of the century. The Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903 and with it American consumers began to discover the adventures of the open road.

In the early years of the 20th century, it was not uncommon for bicycles, animal-powered wagons and new gasoline-powered motor vehicles to share the same streets and roadways with pedestrians. Accidents were frequent. After witnessing a collision between an automobile and a horse-drawn carriage, Morgan was convinced that something should be done to improve traffic safety.

While other inventors are reported to have experimented with and even marketed traffic signals, Garrett A. Morgan was the first to apply for and acquire a U.S. patent for such a device. The patent was granted on November 20, 1923. Morgan later had the technology patented in Great Britain and Canada as well.

The Morgan traffic signal was a T-shaped pole unit that featured three positions: Stop, Go and an all-directional stop position. This “third position” halted traffic in all directions to allow pedestrians to cross streets more safely.

Morgan's traffic management device was used throughout North America until it was replaced by the red, yellow and green-light traffic signals currently used around the world. The inventor sold the rights to his traffic signal to the General Electric Corporation for $40,000. Shortly before his death, in 1963, Morgan was awarded a citation for his traffic signal by the United States Government.

Other Morgan Inventions. Garrett Morgan was constantly experimenting to develop new concepts. Though the traffic signal came at the height of his career and became one of his most renowned inventions, it was just one of several innovations he developed, manufactured and sold over the years.

Morgan invented a zig-zag stitching attachment for manually operated sewing machine. He also founded a company that made personal grooming products, such as hair dying ointments and the curved-tooth pressing comb.

Another Significant Contribution to Public Safety. On July 25, 1916, Morgan made national news for using a gas mask he had invented to rescue several men trapped during an explosion in an underground tunnel beneath Lake Erie. After the rescue, Morgan's company received requests from fire departments around the country who wished to purchase the new masks. The Morgan gas mask was later refined for use by U.S. Army during World War I. In 1921, Morgan was awarded a patent for a Safety Hood and Smoke Protector. Two years later, a refined model of his early gas mask won a gold medal at the International Exposition of Sanitation and Safety, and another gold medal from the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

As word of Morgan’s life-saving inventions spread across North America and England, demand for these products grew. He was frequently invited to conventions and public exhibitions to demonstrate how his inventions worked.

Garrett A. Morgan died on August 27, 1963, at the age of 86. His life was long and full, and his creative energies have given us a marvelous and lasting legacy.