It was 1945. World War II was just ending. The Sammamish Plateau was still almost entirely undeveloped woods and farmland. Indeed, most of metropolitan Seattle was, in fact, IN the Seattle city limits—there was little of the urban sprawl on the Eastside that we know today. Meanwhile that year, Sammamish Plateau resident Oscar Freed’s well had dried out, and the family was hauling water from Pine Lake to meet their needs. Though there was enough water for their chickens, the Freeds needed more water for their family. Freed recognized that there was a need overall for a water district here on the Plateau. He summoned his friends together and discussed the idea, and 76 area residents put the issue on the ballot in the fall of 1945. “It just squeaked by” laughed Freed when he was interviewed years later. “Some people thought we were crazy. About 35 families put up $100 apiece, and dug a well deeper than any other. Fortunately, we hit water.”

In February 1946, Freed held the first meeting of the newly formed water district in his home near Pine Lake. He was elected as water commissioner, and Water District 82 was born. Many people came to view Oscar Freed almost as the founder of Water District 82. He’s remembered with great fondness by his contemporaries. In 1946 there were 35 customers in the District (paying $4 a month for water hookups); in 1975, there were still only 750 customers hooked up. By comparison, in 2002 the District reported 14,000 customers, and that number is expected to continue to rapidly increase over the next few years, eventually more than doubling from what it is today.

The Water District meetings were held in Oscar Freed’s home for thirty years, until he retired in 1978. The District secretary kept her “office” in Freed’s kitchen. All payment records were recorded in a handwritten ledger. Bills were typed with carbon paper—one copy went to the customer, and the second was kept by the District. Sometime in the late 1970s the District expanded its office into an evergreen trailer, then into a larger building in the 1980s. The District continued to rapidly grow, though, and moved into the present, spacious facility located at 1510 SE 228th in 1997.

Until the early 1970s, the District’s water supply consisted of two wells which pumped and stored water in a small, 12,000 gallon tank located at the same site where the District’s present main water tank is today. Many of the Plateau’s residents had their own wells and didn’t need the District’s water, so this small tank—which was an elevated tank built on wooden supports—was enough to meet the District’s needs. There was a problem, too, which soured some from using District water. The District’s wells tapped water from a depth in the ground which had a high concentration of iron algae. This algae would get into the pipes, and when area residents would wash their white bedsheets in the water, the sheets would come out of the wash with marks on them. This algae would also collect in the bottom of the old tank, and had to be hosed out at least once a year—a long arduous process.

By the mid to late 1970s the Sammamish Plateau was beginning to experience real development. The District commissioners realized there was a need for a bigger water tank, and the present, 2 million gallon water tank that you see on the east side of SE 15th and 228th SE was completed in 1977. This tank was built to withstand large earthquakes, and also 100 mile an hour winds; it’s supported by vertical bolts anchored into the ground.

Chicago Bridge and Iron built the tank. This company’s name caused a lot of amusement with the local water commissioners, because Chicago Bridge and Iron has never built a bridge! The tank was built using several methods. Horizontal welds in the tank were done by a machine which “crawled” around the tank, doing continuous circular welds as it went along. Vertical welds were done by hand. But perhaps the most interesting part of the tank’s construction was the dome of the tank. The dome of the tank was actually built on the bottom of the tank. Once it was finished, it was “blown up” to the top by a blower which used water pressure to lift it. Once it got to the top, it was welded on in a fairly delicate operation—probably the toughest part of building the entire tank. A funnel was installed at the top of the tank to catch excess water in the event the tank overflows.

If you’ve seen the tank, you’ve seen the attractive landscape design that’s painted on it. There’s an interesting story behind that: local high school students here on the Sammamish Plateau were asked to select the best design, and one student came up with the design of blue sky and evergreen trees. When the painter sprayed the design onto the tank, he simply looked at nearby trees and drew them onto the tank.

The District began drilling more water wells once the tank was built. As I mentioned earlier, from the 1940s until the early 1970s, there were only two wells serving the District. As of 2002, fifteen wells have been drilled, though only twelve to thirteen of the wells are currently operating. (There are thirteen working wells, but one occasionally goes out of commission.) The wells were drilled with a rod with a cutter on the end which went up and down into the ground and softened the dirt for removal. Once the ground was softened, a long tube was inserted into the drill and lowered into the hole. This tube had a “trap door” and the rocks and dirt in the hole would be forced through the trap door and into the tube. The tube was then taken out of the hole and the rocks and dirt removed, then the entire process would be repeated. Sample of the rock were placed in individual bags, each marked with the depth that the rock had been taken out of the ground. Geologists would study the rock to determine exactly where the water table was. This helped in the drilling of the wells as not all of the wells are the same depth—two of the deepest wells are over 700 feet in the ground.

As the wells were dug, workers put casing into the hole. As the hole got deeper, it was necessary to put narrower casing inside of casing. Casing of a certain width could only go so deep into the ground before friction would stop it from going any deeper. Narrower casing would then be inserted into the existing casing and, because this second casing was smaller, it could be punched deeper into the ground. As a result the wells are encased with four or five different layers of casing, with the narrowest casing reaching to the water table. A fine screen, with mesh no wider than one-eighth of an inch, is in the narrowest casing to allow water—but not dirt and rock—to pass through into the pipe itself.

All of the water districts in King County were known simply by numbers for many years. This confused people as there was no rhyme or reason to the numbers—for example, due north of Sammamish’s Water District 82 was Water District 121 (where Sahalee is today). People assumed the water districts were all connected with King County and were one in the same, in spite of the different numbers. Thus it wasn’t uncommon for someone to call a water district with no thought of where they were calling when their water went out and they wanted help. Someone in Bothell might call the District here in Sammamish to complain, and of course, there was nothing anyone here could do about it. By the early 1980s the commissioners realized the Districts needed to be identified by where they were. There was a lot of debate about what to name our district—some favored “Pine Lake”, while others favored “Lake Sammamish”, but eventually, “Sammamish Plateau” was selected.

Oscar Freed was interviewed several times by local newspapers between his retirement in 1978 and his death the following year. He had several funny stories to tell. One of his favorites was from the late ‘40s. When the original water tank was put in in 1946 on the Plateau, it filled with sand rather quickly over just a couple of years. The tank was so full of sand it was taking up space for water. The district cleaned out the tank, but it still wasn’t enough to meet demand, especially on the weekend. Freed said that water typically ran out of the tank by Sunday noon. Those who didn’t get their water in time were forced to line up at the foot of Thompson Hill with their newspapers and wait at the spring for another water to fill their cisterns for a week.

Twenty years later , the district was drilling Well Number 4. For various reasons, this well was particularly difficult to drill, but finally, after several tries, the drilling team hit water at 700 feet deep. Unfortunately there was swamp gas with the water—“boy did that water stink” laughed Freed in one of his interviews. “But it was good well water and the health department passed it. After sitting awhile the smell went away.”

Where do we go from here? Plateau land use plans call for development to continue to rapidly increase on the Sammamish Plateau in the coming years, with water connections in the District eventually reaching 31,000—more than double the 14,000 connections today. Studies have shown however that there’s only enough water for 23,000 connections, though. Eventually, the District will have to convert to the Regional Water System (some call it “Seattle water”) to meet increasing demand. This is a bone of contention with some people because although the water in Sammamish isn’t chlorinated, “Seattle water” is. Local residents favor the taste of our ground water over Seattle’s chlorinated water. Our water commissioners are trying to figure out a way to blend the two waters together so we can keep that “ground water” taste.

---Phil Dougherty

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