Who Can We Thank For Clean Water in Evanston?

Evanston’s water treatment plant, provided by Grace Eder

Few students at Northwestern University know the history of the water treatment plant just north of campus, on the shore of Lake Michigan. Between the Wildcats’ athletic facilities and Evanston’s iconic lighthouse, there is a humble brick building. Thanks to the work inside, we can turn on a faucet just about anywhere in Evanston and fill our Nalgenes with potable water. The story begins with one man.

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Charles J. Gilbert grew up before any lighthouse or water treatment plant stood by the shore north of Northwestern University. In fact, the university itself had just recently been built, in 1851. Fifteen years later, the country pulled out of the Civil War. Living in the Village of Evanston, a small farming town on the outskirts of Chicago, Charles felt distant from the war. He focused on life around him.

As a boy, he had never seen the ocean, but he imagined it would not compare to the massive lake. His mother even still accidentally called it an ocean sometimes. Whenever Charles walked along the rocky shores and looked east over the water, the beauty took his breath away. Some days it looked deep blue, or green, or even light purple. Some days it was just gray, but how could gray contain so many colors besides?

On picnics, he walked right up to the edge of the lake, squatted by the shore, and cupped a handful of the cold water. Then, it looked clear enough to drink like the water from the well in his backyard.

All of his neighbors drew groundwater from residential wells. One year, his neighbor down the way caught a fever and never recovered. Charles’ mother told him it was typhoid. The death sounded painful—his neighbor had stayed inside for days, curled up in bed because the pain in his stomach prevented him from moving. Diarrhea and sweat drained him of water, and he burned with fever. Charles’s mother would not let him go to the funeral.

While Charles attended school, more neighbors died from water-borne illnesses. Cholera, in addition to typhoid, caused many deaths. Sanitation committees printed signs in the same font as “wanted” posters in the Wild West, although here in Evanston, the bandit was a disease.

Storekeepers hung these notices of public health around town: “Notice: Preventives of CHOLERA! Published by order of the Sanitary Committee, under the sanction of the Medical Council. Avoid raw vegetables and unripe fruit! Be temperate in eating and drinking!... Sleep and clothe warm! Do not sleep or sit in a draught of air. Avoid getting wet! Attend immediately to all disorders of the bowels.”

Notice, published by order of the Sanatory Committee, under the sanction of the Medical Counsel (New York, 1849). Retrieved from New-York Historical Society Museum and Library.

In school, Charles studied why cholera and typhoid persisted. Waste from outhouses sank through the pores of the ground, into the underground reservoirs that their wells tapped. Just thinking about human fecal matter coming near drinking water made Charles’s stomach turn. His neighbors were dying preventable deaths. He wanted to change that.

While water slowly poisoned his neighbors, fire struck the big city. In October of 1871, Charles read newspaper headlines that the Great Chicago Fire raged for three days. The numbers astounded him: 300 people dead, and more than 100,000 homeless. As refugees flocked north to Evanston, they stirred the neighborhood from being just a sleepy farming village.

Around that time, Civil War hero Orlando Metcalfe Poe visited town, on his run of constructing lighthouses along the Great Lakes. In 1872, Charles watched engineers lay the foundation of the Evanston lighthouse. Now, he wanted a project of his own.

Evanston elected Charles to be the first president of the Village board. He spearheaded a project to build a water filtration plant, just north of the new university. Some of his neighbors remained leery of the new water technology. They said it wasn’t worth all the money when they were just fine with the water from their wells.

Charles cited all the waterborne illnesses that their groundwater caused, and slowly convinced people to support his project. In 1874, they purchased and installed the first engine for $24,000 at a time when tuition for Northwestern was $45 per year. The completed design was a 16-inch diameter intake pipe to carry water from the bottom of the lake to the new treatment facility. A state-of-the-art engine pumped the water from 1,200 feet offshore all the way to the water treatment facility. His team named the engine the C. J. Gilbert, and Charles became the Father of the Evanston Water Works.

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The water facility grew from there. In 1889, it had a 30-inch intake pipe that ran 2,600 feet into the lake. Engineers installed another engine in 1886, and another in 1897. The C. J. Gilbert ran continuously for 17 years, pumping 2 million gallons of water each day.

Today, the Evanston Water Treatment Plant pumps 38 million gallons of water from the lake every day to serve Evanston and some surrounding suburban neighborhoods. The plant went through a major expansion in 1924 to switch to coal power, and it has gone through two more expansions since then. Every year, the city spends an average of $3 million to upgrade the treatment plant and another $3 million on water main replacement to make sure the City of Evanston continues to provide clean, safe, and reliable drinking water to its residents.

The original Evanston Water Works, built in 1874. Retrieved from the 2013 Annual Report of the Evanston Utilities Department.