KEEP IT CLEAN A short history of the Filter Building Story by RENEE UMSTED | Photography by SHELBY TAUBER
IT WAS APRIL 1914. White Rock Lake was filled with 6 billion gallons of water, and the pump station was providing water to nearby residents. No filtration plant existed at the lake, but the water was treated at a plant in Turtle Creek. In 1915, Dr. W.R. Blaylock wrote a letter to The Dallas Morning News, warning that the lake could become a petri dish for typhoid and other germs if recreational
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activities were allowed there. Water Commissioner A .C. Cason sug ges ted that residents should boil water because it could “ become foul at any time,” even though it was being filtered by the Turtle Creek plant. An analysis in 1916 revealed the White Rock water, which was treated with chlorine, was free of disease-causing bacteria. But the state sanitation engineer,
