Flowing Down Below
On November 30, 1891, the city of Seattle adopted a plan to build a combined sewer system to handle both sewage and stormwater. City residents were already required to connect to existing sewer lines, but a growing population needed an improved system of waste disposal. The new sewage lines were implemented a few years later, but the system was still problematic because wastewater and untreated sewage were discharged into local waterways.
Most of the offal was piped into Puget Sound to be carried away by tides and currents, but during heavy rains the overflow was also dumped into Lake Washington, Lake Union, and the Duwamish River. During the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, drinking water at the fairgrounds became tainted when a plumbing mix-up shunted lake water into the fairgrounds' drinking water supply. The resulting typhoid outbreak sickened over 500 people, 61 of whom died.
Water-treatment facilities built in the 1920s helped to lessen the health risk from the city's sewage outflow, but overflow conditions continued to turn Lake Washington into a giant cesspool. In the 1950s, the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle, commonly known as Metro, was created to clean up Lake Washington. Once Metro began opening sewage treatment plants and stemming the discharge of sewage into the lake, its waters began to improve. (Image courtesy Gordon Werner)
Remembering WTO
This week in 1999, Seattle hosted the World Trade Organization's Third Ministerial Conference, which brought 135 trade delegates to the city. It also drew tens of thousands of activists who condemned the WTO for favoring corporate interests over social and environmental concerns. City officials had assured downtown business owners that the police were well-prepared for any conflicts that might arise. On November 28, several marches and a few small rallies were held downtown, and on November 29 more people gathered together in mostly non-confrontational protests. Then, on November 30, the crowds swelled and all hell broke loose.
Unprepared for the huge numbers of protestors, Seattle police used tear gas and pepper spray to clear some intersections. Undaunted, the crowd of protestors continued to grow, and handfuls of self-proclaimed anarchists broke windows and sprayed graffiti. By mid-afternoon, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell declared a state of emergency and police began using massive amounts of tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and other "less lethal munitions" to move protestors, and anyone else -- including news reporters and film crews -- out of downtown. Newsfeeds from the heart of the protest disappeared. Meanwhile, high up above Westlake Center, HistoryLink's "WTO-Cam" silently grabbed a single snapshot of the chaos every 30 seconds and sent it out over the web.
The following day, police enforced a "No Protest Zone" around the WTO meeting, but major confrontations occurred as protestors were pushed up Capitol Hill. The crackdown eased on December 2, as peaceful protests proceeded. The WTO conference ended on December 3, in failure due to disagreements among the delegates and the protests on the streets.
