ABSTRACT
In one of its useful fact sheets, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA)
explains the history of drinking water treatment to an average citizen with the following
narrative:
In the early 1900s, reacting to the large number of typhoid and other disease outbreaks, the
United States and local governments began establishing public health programs to protect
water supplies. The first were water pollution control programs, which focused on keeping
surface water supplies safe by identifying and limiting sources of contamination. Early water
pollution control programs concentrated on keeping raw sewage out of surface waters used
for drinking water. Efforts were also made to site intakes used to collect drinking water
upstream from sewage discharges (USEPA, 2003a).
