Water-borne diseases such as dysentery, typhoid fever, and cholera had been serious threats to the public’s drinking water supply during the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Hoad and Decker began operations with a new solution to this persistent public health problem: water filtration and disinfection using chlorine. Its work expanded to sewerage treatment, flood control, and additional civil infrastructure throughout Michigan and other Great Lakes states.

Several projects received much notoriety, including the first Sewage Disposal Plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1915; the Oakland County, Michigan, Sewage Disposal Works in 1926; and the City Reservoir and the Water Purification Plant for Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1933. The Saginaw, Michigan, Water Works purification plant in 1928 was described then as “one of the most outstanding plants in the United States and Canada.”

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