On December 17, 1962, Seattle Mayor Gordon Clinton (1920-2011) officiates at a dedication ceremony celebrating the arrival of the first water from the city's new Tolt River supply system, which is delivered to the newly completed Lake Forest Park Reservoir. The Tolt supply supplements the Cedar River supply system, which since 1901 has been providing water to Seattle and many surrounding communities that purchase water from its water department. The City of Seattle first applied for water rights on the Tolt River, which flows from the Cascade foothills in northeast King County, in 1936, but it was not until the 1950s that work on the new supply got underway -- just in time to meet skyrocketing water demand driven by population growth and additions to the department's service area. By December 1962, a regulating reservoir, control works, and treatment center five miles east of Duvall; the Lake Forest Park Reservoir; and the pipeline connecting them have been completed and Tolt River water begins flowing to Seattle residents. A dam and storage reservoir on the South Fork Tolt will be dedicated in 1964, completing the first phase of the Tolt River supply system.
Tolt River Rights
The first pipeline from the Cedar River watershed in southeast King County began supplying Seattle in 1901, a second pipeline came on line in 1909, and a third was added in 1926. By the 1930s, even while planning a fourth Cedar River pipeline, which was eventually completed in 1954, water department officials began planning for a second separate source of supply. The city's initial acquisition of water rights on the Tolt River followed a heated competition between the Seattle water department and the Mountain Lakes Water Company, which was planning to develop a private supply system on the Tolt River, to serve customers in the area from N 85th Street (then Seattle's northern boundary) to the Snohomish County line.
Although the Seattle water department had for years supplied many local water districts and community water systems outside city boundaries, until 1933 it did so by allowing them to connect pipes to department meters at the city lines, and did not build or own distribution mains outside the city. In 1930 city officials asked the water department to build and operate a water main to serve Firland Sanatorium, the city-owned tuberculosis hospital located some six miles north of the N 85th Street boundary, but the Mountain Lakes company asked the King County commissioners, who had jurisdiction over provision of water service outside city boundaries, to deny the request to build the water main. The company argued that the city's proposed main would parallel its own pipe and interfere with its service.
Following the objection, the King County commissioners initially rejected Seattle's application to build the water main north of its boundary. However the city water department had several advantages in its competition with the private company -- its Cedar River supply system was fully developed, unlike the proposed but not-even-started Tolt system, and it was widely expected that Seattle would eventually annex much of the area from 85th to the Snohomish line (as indeed it did), so that a private water supplier would then have to be bought out at the expense of area residents. Thus in 1931 and 1932 voters in several of the larger water districts north of the existing city limits rejected contracts with Mountain Lakes in favor of service from Seattle. In 1932, the King County commissioners granted Seattle the pipeline franchise that they had denied the previous year, and the line from the city to Firland was built in 1933.
Effectively out of business, the Mountain Lakes company offered to sell Seattle its water-rights permits on the Tolt River. On July 14, 1936, the city filed applications with the state Division of Hydraulics for water rights and development of reservoirs on both the north and south forks of the Tolt. The submittal gained Seattle preliminary permits for the future supply. The unused Mountain Lakes Water Company permits were canceled in 1937, and Seattle had control of the additional supply it would need.
Perfectly Positioned
For some time, however, the effects of the Great Depression and then World War II precluded any significant work to expand the Cedar River system or begin planning and building the Tolt system. It was not until October 1955, some 18 months after the fourth and final Cedar River pipeline was completed, that the Seattle city council approved a water-rate increase to cover the capital costs of building the Tolt River supply system. That same year, the department hired engineering consultants to plan and design a dam on the South Fork Tolt River, from which a pipeline would carry water to a receiving reservoir in Lake Forest Park at the north end of Lake Washington.
Located 30 miles due east of Seattle's north end, the Tolt River was perfectly positioned to supply North Seattle and the east side of Lake Washington, both areas where the water department was significantly increasing its service. West of the lake, the City of Seattle had as anticipated extended its boundaries northward to 145th Street, annexing nearly 10 square miles of territory, and the department began providing water to the parts of this area it was not already supplying. Because the planned Lake Forest Park Reservoir fed by the Tolt River would be 100 feet higher than reservoirs fed by the Cedar, development of the new supply would eliminate much of the pumping necessary to get Cedar River water to higher-elevation North Seattle neighborhoods.
In addition to serving newly annexed North Seattle, the water department was also beginning to supply water to communities across Lake Washington, by selling water to local water districts there. The first significant expansion across the lake came in 1957, when the 21-million-gallon-per-day East Side Water Supply Line was completed, allowing the department to serve Mercer Island and nearby water districts on the eastern shore of the lake.
In 1958, the water department sold bonds for the first time since 1938, as part of the financing for construction of the Tolt River supply system. That same year, the Bitter Lake Reservoir, with a capacity of 21.5 million gallons and an elevation of 499 feet, was opened in North Seattle just south of the new city limits, at N 143rd Street and Linden Avenue N. Fed at first by the Cedar River supply, it would soon receive Tolt River water.
Starting to Build
Construction of the Tolt system began in March 1959. It was none too soon. The population was increasing rapidly in Seattle and particularly in the suburban areas to which the department supplied water. Peak demand on hot summer days now greatly exceeded the approximately 200 million gallons per day that the Cedar River supply could deliver. To avoid drawing reservoirs down too far, by the summer of 1959 the department was imposing emergency regulations limiting lawn watering and other uses. Such restrictions would be needed for three more summers. However, knowing that Tolt River water would arrive soon, the water department continued to expand the area that it supplied. In 1960, the City of Kirkland and several water districts east and north of Kirkland began using Seattle water.
The Tolt River supply system consisted of a dam and storage reservoir on the river's South Fork connected by five miles of pipeline to a regulating reservoir and control works, and a 25-mile-long pipeline from the control works to a 60-million-gallon receiving reservoir in Lake Forest Park just north of Seattle. The dam and reservoir behind it were actually the last portions of the project to be finished. The regulating reservoir, control works, and primary treatment center located five miles east of Duvall; the Lake Forest Park Reservoir; and the pipeline connecting them were all completed before the end of 1962. The Lake Forest Park Reservoir was located at 47th Avenue NE and NE 195th Street at an elevation of 540 feet, making it the highest distribution reservoir in the Seattle water system.
A dedication ceremony on December 17, 1962, celebrated the delivery of the first Tolt River water to the Lake Forest Park Reservoir. In addition to serving North Seattle, the new Tolt pipeline would also provide water to the City of Duvall and several water districts east of the north end of Lake Washington. With the new pipeline in operation, the shortages that led to water restrictions the previous four summers were alleviated.
Completing the System
Work on the South Fork Tolt dam and the storage reservoir behind it continued through 1963. The 200-foot-high earth-fill dam stretched 900 feet across a narrow valley, impounding a 19-billion-gallon reservoir. Because the dam was upstream of waterfalls that posed natural barriers to migrating salmon, Water Superintendent Ray Heath and other department officials asserted there would be no impact on fish populations. Nevertheless, department plans to close the upper watershed to fishing and other recreation, which Heath pointed out was necessary to avoid the need for more expensive water treatment, displeased some anglers and state fish and game officials.
The South Fork Reservoir embankment was fully sealed by September 1963, allowing the department to begin filling the reservoir behind the dam, and all construction contracts were completed by that October. The reservoir first reached its full capacity in May 1964. Three months later, on August 28, 1964, Superintendent Heath; J. D. "Dorm" Braman (1901-1980), who had succeeded Gordon Clinton as Mayor of Seattle; and other officials participated in a dedication ceremony to mark the completion of the first phase of the Tolt River development, which added 90 million gallons per day to Seattle's total water supply.
At the time, it was expected that well before the end of the twentieth century Seattle's water supply would have to be further augmented by the addition of the Tolt's North Fork or other sources. Ray Heath wrote in 1965 that further development of supply would be needed as early as 1980. But Heath, like most at the time, anticipated continually rising per capita water consumption -- "to allow for probably increased use for domestic and industrial purposes, and to provide latitude in planning," his forecast assumed that consumption levels would rise to 250 gallons per person per day ("A Decade of Progress").
As it turned out, water conservation efforts that began in the 1980s, and intensified in subsequent decades, proved so successful that the projected need to develop a third major supply source was pushed well past the midpoint of the twenty-first century. A small supplemental supply from wells was developed in the 1980s, and a second Tolt pipeline, built in phases, was completed 2002, but even as the population served continued to grow substantially the supply available from the South Fork Tolt and Cedar remained sufficient more than half a century after the Tolt river water first arrived.
