Early American Water History
Mary-Anna Holden is a former New Jersey BPU Commissioner and Butch Howard is a former South Carolina PSC Commissioner.
As America celebrates its semiquincentennial, or 250th anniversary, of the Declaration of Independence, we thought it might be interesting to note that even as early as the Jamestown, Virginia, settlement in 1607, drinking water was of paramount concern to our English ancestors. However, the only water considered in that site’s selection was a deep-water anchorage and not its drinking water source.
Well digging was shallow in Tidewater clay, probably no more than about eight feet. Anything deeper fed a brackish James River ooze that caused fluxes (diarrhea and dysentery) and agues (chills, fever, and sweating, most likely malaria). Today, such water with its lower-than-seawater salinity can be treated with reverse osmosis and used industrially or for agriculture.
New England colonies, by contrast, were in slightly better shape as replenishing lakes and surface water were more plentiful. However, their knowledge of water, public health, and water delivery was simple. European habits of poor sanitation and infrequent bathing kept water use to a minimum. After all, the main household daily water source was to retrieve and carry home a bucket or two from a central source, such as a spring, a lake, a well or a river.
The terrain of New England delivered good river recharge opportunities and artesian groundwater flow. Colonists found the water soft and sweet as it flowed through glacial sand and gravel rather than the clay of southern colonies.