Learn from our water history

For 20 years after Winnipeg was incorporated, a private company called Winnipeg Water Works controlled the water supply, and it did a poor job of delivering service. Large sections of the city (including the North End, North Kildonan, East Kildonan and Elmwood) had no clean running water. Human and industrial waste were regularly dumped into the rivers, from which people in under-serviced neighbourhoods had no choice but to drink and draw bathing and cooking water. The private supplier provided too few fire hydrants, so fires in the downtown commercial district could not be fought properly. In addition to the unnecessary loss of life and property, this resulted in astronomical insurance premiums for individuals and firms.

After years of public concern, city council attempted to re-establish control of the city's water supply. Winnipeg Water Works, however, would not give up this lucrative concern without a fight. In 1898, Winnipeg finally succeeded in winning back from the business sector control of the water supply: In the end, the city paid the company $237,000 -- nearly $4.7 million in today's dollars -- for the privilege of delivering clean water to its own citizens.

Not only did the city have to pay to regain control of its own water supply, the system it inherited was deeply flawed and expensive to fix. Once again, councillors chose short-term cost savings at the expense of safe water and were slow to address the problems that had forced them to create a public water utility. In 1904, Winnipeg had the highest rate of typhoid deaths on the continent, and in 1912 almost three of every 10 babies born in the district bordering the North End died before their first birthday.

Between 1904 and 1906, over 4,000 Winnipeggers contracted typhoid, and 377 of them died. Why? A major determinant was the lack of clean, safe water for the citizens of the city, who as a result were exposed to diseases spread through contaminated water. This problem was not the result of inadequate technology or poor understanding of hygiene. Simply put, many people became ill and died unnecessarily because city council continued to pursue doomed attempts to save some money in the short term.

In 1905, U.S. public health expert Edwin O. Jordan came from Chicago to investigate the reasons for Winnipeg's appalling number of typhoid deaths. He found a contaminated water supply, caused by the lack of sewer infrastructure and the use of backyard privies, and an inadequate source of clean water. The typhoid epidemic infected the wealthy residents of south Winnipeg as well as those in the long-under-serviced North End, and this finally turned the tide toward public investment in water and sewer infrastructure.

Winnipeg constructed the Shoal Lake aqueduct at a cost of nearly $2 million. It was forced to take action by public outrage and fear of disease, by the expense of insuring against disaster, and by repeated, disastrous attempts to save cash in the short term. It was not until 1919 that Winnipeg had an adequate supply of clean water (and even then many working-class people were not connected to the distribution system).

There are two morals to this story. The first is that, even in water-rich Manitoba, clean, safe, water is not free. Significant money will always be required for water treatment and supply, no matter if that system is private or public. The second lesson is that, while private-sector involvement in the water supply may seem to lower the cost in the short term, the long-term cost is almost certainly higher. Measures such as commercialization have potentially disastrous implications, since many diseases can be spread through the water supply. The more well-known of these include cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, polio and typhoid.

According to the World Health Organization, an even greater risk may come from newly emerging pathogens that can be transmitted through water, such as the coronavirus, which was responsible for SARS.

Is this scare-mongering? Recall that when Mike Harris' "common sense revolution" contracted with private laboratory companies in Ontario to monitor the quality of the water supply, E. coli deaths in Walkerton were the result.

Winnipeg's early municipal leaders could not resist the lure of commercialization. They wanted to believe somehow the private sector's entrepreneurial inspiration and business acumen would be able to reconcile the competing demands of private profit and public safety. They were wrong.

Mayor Sam Katz's plans to create a private-public partnership to deliver water to Winnipeg may seem to offer a way to make badly needed infrastructure improvements without raising taxes. History gives us compelling reasons to be wary of such claims.

Esyllt Jones is an assistant professor of history, University of Manitoba. This piece was written in collaboration with Marion McKay, associate dean, undergraduate programs, faculty of nursing, University of Manitoba.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 15, 2009 A10