The City Water System

The City Water System. Annapolis Charter 300 1708-2008. The first important work on water sanitation, that of Edwin Chadwick in 1842, finally seemed to have caught local attention in the 1850s when the City Council passed the first ordinances governing disposal of human remains. A decade later, large numbers of Civil War troops stationed at Annapolis exposed the limitations of the 200 year old system of public and private wells the City had relied on. Sewage and medical waste further compromised wells. In 1865 Alexander Randall led a private group to found the Annapolis Water Company. Only the wealthiest homes enjoyed private connections; most citizens still obtained their water from public pumps located on major streets. The City purchased the outstanding private shares on AWC in 1912, making the company an agency of city government., Persistent problems with typhoid fever, especially in Eastport, and the occasional tadpole emerging from the kitchen faucet, led to a system expansion, filtering chemical sanitation treatments in 1930. Today the system maintains 125 mils of pipes that provide a safe and dependable supply of drinking water to residential and business customers., For most of the city's history, Annapolitans discharged wastewater into the harbor and neighboring creeks, a practice that killed aquatic life and produced an overwhelming stench, particularly during the summer months. In 1934, the city erected a wastewater treatment plant on Back Creek. A modern facility, owned by the City and Anne Arundel County and operated by the county, opened in 1972. The system today includes 130 miles of sewage pipes., In 1930 the city assumed direct control of refuse collection and street sanitation., Michael Parker, Community Historian