The Fort Dodge Messenger: March 21, 1903

City Water is Pronounced Pure

No More Impurities are Revealed by Careful Tests of City Physician Churchill

No More Need for Teakettles

Necessity for Boiling Water is Now Over. Lasts Typhoid Germ Has Fled

Fort Dodge city water has been pronounced pure. No longer need the anxious housewife bend over the steaming teakettle in which the family beverage is simmering in order that the last wandering microbe may be exterminated. No longer may the business man, busy at his office down town, and far from the disinfecting teakettle, rush hastily out to get a drink of Colfax water or something stronger, that he may incur no danger of catching the dread thyphoid (sic).

City Physician Churchill announced this morning that after repeated tests, he has failed to find signs of impurity in the city  water, and that it is once more fit to drink.

The happy outcome of the bad water scare indicates that truth of the supposition that the cause of the impurities which manifested themselves was the holding of surface drainage beneath the ice. Now that the ice has gone out, the trouble seems to have righted itself.

Just as soon as the water is low enough, the sand in the filters will be renewed, and all will be well again.

The news that the water is pure again will be gladly received all over the city, as the condition of Fort Dodge’s favorite beverage has aroused considerable anxxiety (sic) for the past few weeks.

Tags: 1903, Churchill