thought very highly
of them3. The first
Director of the Bu-reau
of Sanitary En-gineering
28 SOURCE spring 2020
was Ches-ter
G. Gillespie, one
of Professor Hyde’s
early graduates from
the class of 1907. He
was paid an annual
salary of $4,000. The
Bureau was given
the responsibility
for the inspection and permitting of pub-lic
water systems4, inspection of sewage
treatment plants, wastewater discharges,
use of reclaimed wastewater, recreation-al
waters (including public swimming
pools), mosquito abatement, shellfish
harvesting, registration of plumbers and
other special investigations as required
to protect public health. Except for two
years when Ralph Hilscher ran the Bu-reau,
Director Gillespie led BSE for 32
years until 1947. In a report to the Legisla-ture
in 1930, Director Gillespie noted that
much of BSE’s work was to raise the sani-tary
conscience and interest of the people.
Regulations were scarce in the early years
of the program, and more often than not,
BSE staff traveled the state to convince
public officials and water and wastewa-ter
operators simply to move the sewage
discharge pipes downstream and away
from drinking water intakes. There were
15 waterborne typhoid fever epidemics in
California between 1915 and 1930, with
around 725 cases of typhoid reported. The
number of Californians served by water
treatment works increased from 300,000
in 1915 to 3,400,000 in 1930, and typhoid
cases decreased from 13.3/100,000 people
to 1.7/100,000 during the same period.5
Director Gillespie expressed his
disappointment that California ranked
as one of the highest states in number
of typhoid outbreaks but lowest in
money spent on sanitary engineering
supervision. On a positive note, 202 out
of 288 communities had installed some
type of sewage treatment works within
their communities. The state also had 78
water treatment plants in operation using
disinfection and 19 utilizing some type of
media filtration. By 1930, the Bureau had
opened an office and laboratory in Los
Angeles and increased staffing to nine
individuals (the Director, one research
engineer, three assistant engineers, an
analyst, a laboratory assistant, a clerk and
a stenographer). The two largest typhoid
outbreaks occurred in Pittsburg in 1920
with 144 cases as raw surface water was
pumped into the city distribution system
without the chlorinator in operation
and Santa Ana in 1924 with 369 cases
caused by a backflow incident with raw
sewage entering a pit well used for public
Water chlorination, from the Historical Photo
Collection of the Department of Water and Power,
City of Los Angeles, Padilla Collection 1908-1935
Chester Gillespie, the
f i r s t d i re c t o r o f
California’s Bureau of
Sanitary Engineering.
MAKING HISTORY
/westernstatescorrosion.org
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