Old city water filtration plant on State Park Drive near Saginaw Bay drew on Dow donated reservoir located out of picture across the street. City Lagoon on State Park Drive Was Donated by Dow Chemical Co. in 1935
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Drinking water has historically been a problem for Bay City. In the early 19th century as many as 40 deaths and 300 cases of typhoid a year were reported the result of bad water.
Older residents will recall problems with tastes and odors, hardness and chlorides as recent as several decades ago.
However, improved and more extensive sewage treatment in the Saginaw Valley in recent years, more responsible use of waterways by industry and a new city water filtration plant on Euclid Avenue have virtually eliminated taste, odor and other problems.
The recent announcement that the City of Bay City will spend nearly $6 million to clean up the "north residuals lagoon" recalls the history of that facility, donated in 1935 by The Dow Chemical Co. of Midland.
Herbert Dow, founder of the firm, who died in 1930, had been a contemporary of and collaborator with Louis B. Harrison, city water plant superintendent, since both were chemists and Dow had a critical stake at that time in using the Saginaw River for disposal of wastes.
Donation of $25,000 to the city by Dow was reported in matter-of-fact news stories about an arrangement at the time that today would bring environmentalists screaming. The donation was to build the 10-acre concrete-bottom reservoir to be filled with 46 million gallons of water.
When Dow needed to dump toxic materials in the river firm officials would call Mr. Harrison at the water plant in Bay City and tell him to switch the city water supply from the intake in the bay to the reservoir for a few days. That way the city water supply would be drawn from safe supplies rather than be polluted by industrial wastes coming from the Dow plant through the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers into the bay.
In recent years Dow has become much more environmentally and politically correct, and dumping polluted wastes into any stream would not be the company's practice. In fact the firm is embroiled in arguments about millions of parts of pollutants per gallon with residents in the Freeland area. But in those early years the donation and use of the reservoir while toxic wastes were being dumped made sense both for business and the health and safety of the public.
Although Bay City had installed a new water intake four miles into the bay off Linwood in 1952, officials said they never stopped using the old intake, just a half mile off State Park. This information was researchedin 1968 in preparation for an election proposing merger of the Bay City and Saginaw-Midland water systems. The vote, which required a "no" vote for merger and a "yes" vote against merger, failed to approve the merger by about 150 votes.
In1965 the Michigan Department of Health had warned Bay City against continued use of Saginaw Bay as a raw water source because of deteriorating quality, instability and difficulty of treatment. The city was urged to obtain a Lake Huron water source. The Saginaw-Midland system had drawn its water from Lake Huron off Whitestone Point near AuGres since 1948.
The merger would have joined the two water systems and was promoted by a Tri-County Citizens Committee, the Bay City Chamber of Commerce, the Michigan Department of Health and the federal Economic Development Administration. The city lost an $8.2 million federal grant as a result of the election and failure to pursue another new source at Oak Point in the bay near Caseville.
The old Dow-donated lagoon has been filled with 130,000 cubic yards of lime and organic matter used in water treatment, according to news reports from John DeKam, city superintendent of water treatment and distribution.
Cleaning out the old lagoon is part of about $30 million in water system upgrades in the works over the next five years, according to DeKam. The lagoon reportedly will be divided into three sections that can be emptied on a rotating basis.
Mr. Dow wouldbe happy to know, I'm sure, that the reservoir his company donated nearly 70 years ago is still being put to good use for the people of Bay City.###
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