Agency overview | |
---|---|
Formed | 1997 |
Preceding agency |
|
Type | Public utility |
Jurisdiction | City of Seattle and some outlying communities |
Headquarters | Municipal Tower, 700 Fifth Avenue, Seattle, Washington, United States 47°36′18.36″N122°19′47.28″W / 47.6051000°N 122.3298000°W |
Annual budget | $809 million USD (2013) [1] |
Agency executive |
|
Website | http://www.seattle.gov/util/ |
Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) is a public utility agency of the city of Seattle, Washington, which provides water, sewer, drainage and garbage services for 1.3 million people in King County, Washington. [3] The agency was established in 1997, consolidating the city's Water Department with other city functions. [4]
SPU owns two water collection facilities: one in the Cedar River watershed, which supplies 70 percent of the drinking water used by 1.3 million people in Seattle and surrounding suburbs (primarily the city south of the Lake Washington Ship Canal) and the other in the Tolt River watershed which supplies the other 30 percent (primarily the city north of the canal). [5] [6] [7]
From the city's founding through the 1880s, Seattle's water was provided by several private companies. In a July 8, 1889, election, [4] barely a month after the Great Seattle Fire (June 6, 1889) gave a dramatic illustration of the limitations of the city's water supply, Seattle's citizens voted 1,875 to 51 to acquire and operate their own water system. In accordance with this vote, the city Water Department acquired the Lake Union and Spring Hill plants for $400,000. [8]
This was understood from the first to be only a temporary expedient, inadequate to the expected growth of the city. Attention soon focused on the Cedar River, [4] an idea first proposed in the 1870s; [9] the question was how to bring that water to the city. From 1892, the responsibility for doing so fell to newly hired City Engineer Reginald H. Thomson and his assistant George F. Cotterill. Besides the technical challenges, they and a series of Seattle mayors had to keep the citizenry on board to move forward with this expensive project through the Panic of 1893. [4]
The Klondike Gold Rush put Seattle on a sound economic footing. [4] The 1901 completion of Cedar River Supply System No. 1 (active from February 21, 1901 [9] ) gave the city a steady supply of clean water with an intake 28 miles from the city itself; this was supplemented by Cedar River Supply System No. 2 in 1909. Together, these systems gave the city a supply of more than 60,000,000 US gallons (227,125 kl) of water a day. [10]
The original Cedar River pipeline was made of reinforced wooden pipe "big enough so a small boy could stand upright in it" and carried 22,500,000 US gallons (85,172 kl) of water a day. By 1950, three big mains carried up to 162,000,000 US gallons (613,237 kl) of water a day. [9]
To guard against contamination at the source, the city purchased or otherwise gained control of 142 square miles (370 km2) of land and placed it under the jurisdiction of the Department of Health and Sanitation. The city also established an extensive system of reservoirs within city limits. By 1919, six reservoirs had a combined capacity of 270,000,000 US gallons (1,022,061 kl). [11] In 1950, the city owned "about two-thirds" of the watershed, the federal government "about one-fourth"; the remainder, "around eleven square miles," was owned by private lumber companies. [12]
Seattle has at times contracted to provide water for entities outside of city limits. [13]
In recent decades, the Seattle Regional Water System has significantly improved conservation. 2008 usage was roughly equal to usage in 1960, despite roughly a 35% increase in population over that period. [14] From 1990 to 2012 total water usage declined 29%, despite a population increase of 17%. [15]
SPU operates two waste sorting facilities: the North Transfer Station in Wallingford and the South Transfer Station in South Park. Both facilities were opened in the 1960s and rebuilt in the 2010s to handle greater volumes and include environmentally friendly features. [16] Garbage from Seattle is shipped out via train to the Columbia Ridge Landfill near Arlington, Oregon. [17] [18] [19]
The Cedar River is a river in the U.S. state of Washington. About 45 miles (72 km) long, it originates in the Cascade Range and flows generally west and northwest, emptying into the southern end of Lake Washington. Its upper watershed is a protected area called the Cedar River Watershed, which provides drinking water for the greater Seattle area.
The Seattle Public Library (SPL) is the public library system serving the city of Seattle, Washington. Efforts to start a Seattle library had commenced as early as 1868, with the system eventually being established by the city in 1890. The system currently comprises 27 branches, most of which are named after the neighborhoods in which they are located. The Seattle Public Library also includes Mobile Services and the Central Library, which was designed by Rem Koolhaas and opened in 2004. The Seattle Public Library also founded the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library (WTBBL), which it administered until July 2008.
The utilities of Seattle are provided by two government owned, and five privately owned, public utilities. The public utilities are Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) for the water supply and waste management, and Seattle City Light for electricity. The private companies are Puget Sound Energy for natural gas; Enwave Seattle for district heating; CenturyLink for telephone service, DSL and FTTH; and Comcast and Wave Broadband for cable television and cable internet.
Public Health – Seattle & King County (PHSKC) is the public health department in King County, Washington, United States. It is jointly managed by the City of Seattle and King County governments, serving approximately 2 million residents. Some of its services include King County Medic One, trans fat and menu-labeling regulation, online restaurant inspections, emergency preparedness, family planning and reproductive health services.
The Lansing Board of Water & Light is a publicly owned, municipal utility that provides electricity and water to the residents of the cities of Lansing and East Lansing, Michigan, and the surrounding townships of Delta, Delhi, Meridian and DeWitt. The Lansing Board of Water & Light also provides steam and chilled water services within the City of Lansing.
Daylighting can be defined as "opening up buried watercourses and restoring them to more natural conditions". An alternative definition refers to "the practice of removing streams from buried conditions and exposing them to the Earth's surface in order to directly or indirectly enhance the ecological, economic and/or socio-cultural well-being of a region and its inhabitants". The term is used to refer to the restoration of an originally open-air watercourse, which had at some point been diverted below ground, back into an above-ground channel. Typically, the rationale behind returning the riparian environment of a stream, wash, or river to a more natural state is to reduce runoff, create habitat for species in need of it, or improve an area's aesthetics. In the UK, the practice is also known as deculverting.
Dallas Water Utilities (DWU) is the water and wastewater service operated by the City of Dallas, Texas, in the United States. DWU is a non-profit City of Dallas department that provides services to the city and 31 nearby communities, employs approximately 1450 people, and consists of 26 programs. DWU's budget is completely funded through the rates charged for water and wastewater services provided to customers. Rates are based on the cost of providing the services. The department does not receive any tax revenues. Primary authority and rules for the department are listed in Chapter 49 of the Dallas City Code.
Water supply and sanitation in the United States involves a number of issues including water scarcity, pollution, a backlog of investment, concerns about the affordability of water for the poorest, and a rapidly retiring workforce. Increased variability and intensity of rainfall as a result of climate change is expected to produce both more severe droughts and flooding, with potentially serious consequences for water supply and for pollution from combined sewer overflows. Droughts are likely to particularly affect the 66 percent of Americans whose communities depend on surface water. As for drinking water quality, there are concerns about disinfection by-products, lead, perchlorates, PFAS and pharmaceutical substances, but generally drinking water quality in the U.S. is good.
Reginald Heber Thomson was a self-taught American civil engineer. He worked in Washington state, mainly in Seattle, where he became city engineer in 1892 and held the position for two decades. Alan J. Stein wrote that Thomson "probably did more than any other individual to change the face of Seattle" and was responsible for "virtually all of Seattle's infrastructure".
Clean Water Services is the water resources management utility for more than 600,000 residents in urban Washington County, Oregon and small portions of Multnomah County, Oregon and Clackamas County, Oregon, in the United States. Clean Water Services operates four wastewater treatment facilities, constructs and maintains flood management and water quality projects, and manages flow into the Tualatin River to improve water quality and protect fish habitat. They are headquartered in Hillsboro.
Water supply and sanitation in Jamaica is characterized by high levels of access to an improved water source, while access to adequate sanitation stands at only 80%. This situation affects especially the poor, including the urban poor many of which live in the country's over 595 unplanned squatter settlements in unhealthy and unsanitary environments with a high risk of waterborne disease. Despite a number of policy papers that were mainly focused on water supply and despite various projects funded by external donors, increases in access have remained limited.
The topography of central Seattle was radically altered by a series of regrades in the city's first century of urban settlement, in what might have been the largest such alteration of urban terrain at the time.
George Fletcher Cotterill, born in Oxford, England, was an American civil servant and politician. His public career in Seattle and the state of Washington lasted over 40 years; Cotterill was a Georgist progressive. He was an advocate of woman suffrage, prohibition, land value tax, municipalisation of port facilities and utilities, and the development of public parks.
The Portland Water Bureau is the municipal water department for the city of Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. The bureau manages a water supply that comes mainly from the Bull Run River in the foothills of the Cascade Range east of the city and secondarily from the Columbia South Shore Well Field near the Columbia River. As of 2023, Mingus Mapps was the city commissioner in charge of the bureau, and the chief administrator is Michael Stuhr. Budgeted departmental revenues for fiscal year 2015–16 included about $157 million for charges for services.
The Rex River is a river in the U.S. state of Washington. It originates near the crest of the Cascade Mountains and flows northwest to join the Cedar River in the Chester Morse Lake reservoir. The Cedar River flows to Lake Washington and, ultimately, Puget Sound. Tributaries of the Rex River include Pine Creek, Lindsay Creek, and Boulder Creek.
The South Central Connecticut Regional WaterAuthority is a public water supply utility in Connecticut, United States. The RWA supplies water in a 15-town region with a population of about 430,000. The RWA acts as a steward of the environment in the local region by protecting more than 26,000 acres of watershed lands, and promoting sustainability.
The Greater Winnipeg Water District Aqueduct (GWWDA) is an aqueduct that supplies the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, with water from Shoal Lake, Kenora District, Ontario. Winnipeg has relied on the lake as its source for safe drinking water since the aqueduct was put in service in 1919 at a cost of nearly CDN $16 million.
Casad Dam is a concrete arch dam in Bremerton, Kitsap County, Washington), built starting in 1955 and completed in 1957.
Taylor is an extinct town in King County, in the U.S. state of Washington.
The North Transfer Station, also known as the North Recycling and Disposal Station, is a municipal waste collection and distribution facility in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is located in the Wallingford neighborhood near Gas Works Park and is one of two transfer stations managed by Seattle Public Utilities.