Nashville Drinking Water Quality: Yesterday
The first settlers of Nashville chose the site for Fort Nashboro because of the abundant availability of pure water from a local spring. As the city grew, water was pumped to a reservoir in the public square through hollowed locust and cedar logs, but in 1829 a fire destroyed the water distribution system. The infrastructure was rebuilt using cast iron pipes and satisfied the area’s needs until the rapid population growth during the Civil War created much more demand for drinking water. In response to several cholera outbreaks in 1878, city engineers installed a island filtering gallery at the mouth of Brown’s Creek to reduce the amount of waterborne bacteria in the drinking water by physically removing the mud and other contaminants in the water.
The City Reservoir, later known as the 8th Avenue Reservoir, was constructed as a settling basin, allowing mud to settle out of the river before distributing the water. To improve the color and taste of the drinking water, Nashville city officials started to add sulphate of alumina to help the naturally muddy river water to coagulate the smaller particles into larger, heavier pieces that would settle at the bottom of the reservoir. The Omohundro Water Treatment Plant was constructed in 1929 to help combat the water quality issues from using a settling basin.
Learn more about Nashville’s drinking water history by watching the video below: