Intergovernmental responsibilities for water supply and sewage disposal in metropolitan areas. Page: 23
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In 1956, prior to the creation of the Municipality of Metropolitan
Seattle, future planning for the Lake Washington drainage
basin was made impossible because the boundaries of the many small
sewer districts paid no attention to topography. The individual
units were incapable of economical and efficient operation. In
the area, 60 sewer district commissioners and 139 city councilmen
were concerned with sewage problems. Each of the governmental
units had its own engineers, consultants, and legal advisers.
Ruth Ittner's conclusion on the former Seattle situation is valid
for a great many metropolitan areas: "Coordination of plans with
adjacent units is extremely difficult; planning for the entire area
is virtually impossible." 22/
Inadequate planning leads to duplication of facilities in
development. Once again in the Seattle area, which has experienced
almost all of the possible difficulties of fragmented water and
sewage development, there was a good example in the postwar period
of the kind of duplication and unnecessary capital investment which
result from uncoordinated planning. A suburban water district spent
$1,000,000 for a filtration plant to treat the polluted waters of
Lake Washington. Shortly thereafter Seattle spent $1,950,000 to
construct a pipeline to service some suburbs, adjacent to the water
district, with virgin water from the Cedar River in the Cascades.
The pipeline was large enough to meet the needs of the water district
which invested in the treatment facility for inferior water. In
Chicago, two suburban water districts plan to tap Lake Michigan and
separately transport and treat its water to serve areas which will
soon be contiguous.
Fragmentation also prevents the sharing of facilities in many
areas. In the Pittsburgh area only 13 of 33 water supplier operating
distribution systems have connections with at least one other supplier
to meet emergencies and peak hour demands. Similar problems exist in
suburban northern New Jersey, where independent municipal, district,
and private water systems frequently are not connected, because of the
costs involved in making connections or because of cost differentials
in the water itself which make interchange unattractive.
22/ Ruth Ittner, Government in the Metropolitan Seattle Area
(Seattle: Bureau of Governmental Research and Services,
University of Washington, 1956), p. 36.23 775-756
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United States. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. Intergovernmental responsibilities for water supply and sewage disposal in metropolitan areas., book, October 1962; Washington, D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1424/m1/35/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.