Oakland Underfoot

The East Bay Water Company was a private water provider formed in 1916 from the wreckage of the Peoples Water Company, but it struggled under the high costs for materials during World War I and insufficient water for its customers. Oakland and the East Bay were experiencing a boom at the time, and the company couldn’t expand fast enough despite having some 80 square miles of watershed land in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. It owned Lake Chabot and other reservoirs in Richmond, too. It pumped water from a wellfield in Alvarado. It built the San Pablo Dam in 1919. It ran a long series of informational ads in all the East Bay newspapers in 1920. It took over a competitor, the faltering Union Water Company, in 1921 for $1.1 million. It built the Upper San Leandro Dam in 1926 and the Lafayette Dam in 1928.

Nevertheless, in 1921 fed-up East Bay leaders pushed for the state to enact a law allowing a new type of special government agency — public utilities of regional size. The Municipal Utility District Act having passed, East Bay MUD was established by an overwhelming vote in 1923, and the new utility bought out East Bay Water in 1928 with $26 million in bond money.

That was 12 tumultuous years for this ambitious company. East Bay Water’s excess watershed lands were the core of the East Bay Regional Parks District formed in 1934, also under the state municipal utility district law.

This entry was posted on 10 February 2017 at 8:02 am and is filed under  Streetscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.