page_title: George E. Waring Jr.
section_title: Memphis sewer system
hierarchical_section_title: George E. Waring Jr. / Career / Memphis sewer system
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Memphis sewer system in 1880, originally listed at https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/tennessee.html
context_page_description: George E. Waring Jr. was an American sanitary engineer and civic reformer. He was an early American designer and advocate of sewer systems that keep domestic sewage separate from storm runoff.
context_section_description: Memphis, Tennessee had suffered several severe epidemics of cholera (1849, 1866, 1873) and yellow fever (1867, 1873, 1878 and 1879), with over 5,000 fatalities in 1878 alone. Sanitary conditions in the city were poor, with many domestic wells close by privies and drained by a fetid bayou. Many buildings had standing water underneath because of the poorly-draining clay soil. Civic leaders recognized the need for better drainage and a sewer system that would keep domestic waste away from the wells, although they were wrong in their belief that yellow fever was spread by inadequate sanitation practices. It was, in fact, spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which breeds in stagnant water. The financially strapped city and the state legislature were unable to raise sufficient funds for construction of a conventional combined sewer system, due to the mass exodus of residents for fear of yellow fever. The situation in Memphis aroused the sympathy of the nation and was largely responsible for the creation of the National Board of Health, a predecessor to the United States Public Health Service. The Board sent Waring to Memphis, where he designed what he thought was a system Memphis could afford. Waring's design called for the separation of sewage waste from storm water runoff, an innovation that reduced the size of the pipes required to carry septic sewage. Until this time, this idea had not been used in the United States on a large scale. Memphis constructed a separated sewer system according to Waring's plans, and its era of epidemics came to an end.
caption: Map of the Memphis sewer system in 1880
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