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News from 100 years ago

The following news items were taken from the Mail Tribune archives 100 years ago

August 17, 1922

THE WATER SITUATION IS DESCRIBED BY DOCTOR CR RAY

Dr. CR Ray presented the following view of Medford’s water situation before city council Tuesday evening:

“About 15 years ago the city of Medford was pumping water from Bear Creek with a steam pump for local consumers (and some old-timers now say it was better water and more than now and they didn’t do it then). you have to take turns to get it or stand in line or wait until after midnight to take a bath, like a banker).

“But the people were not satisfied with the water from Bear Creek, they wanted something better. They had drunk the fresh water from the cold springs near Prospect, Dead Indian, Butte creek, Wasson canyon, and Fish lake, and they wanted something like ; they could see and smell Bear Creek, but they could not see or smell Fish Lake.

“About 15 years ago, as stated, a man named Colonel Ray of New York, proposed to deliver pure water to Medford in a pipe 10 miles from the Rogue River above Bear Creek (pumping into a reservoir to an elevation and flows by gravity into a reservoir in Medford at a pressure high enough to provide plenty of water for all the people of Medford here then or who would come here in the future, including the banker).

“The water was to be delivered to the Medford Reservoir and sold wholesale to the city (so that the city could distribute the water through its pipes to the consumer at a profit and sell at much lower rates lower than they are now) and besides the ratepayer didn’t have to pay a cent for the pipe or pumping, or in other words, if the city had accepted Ray’s proposal, it wouldn’t now be burdened with $1,000,000 in debt and only a rotten pipe to show for it.

“… In other words, Colonel Ray’s proposals then meant that if the city of Medford needed additional water, they could pay a reasonable wholesale price for water delivered to their doorstep, to be available for the its use at no cost in the event that the water system breaks down or in the event of a fire, as long as the municipality undertakes to pay the wholesale price of water when it needs more water than it then they had or would need, in the future.

“Or, to put it another way, it was not intended to supplant the city’s water system but to ensure a present and future supply of water when needed, at no cost.”

— Alyssa Corman; acorman@rosebudmedia.com