Briefing: Historical criteria for water industry heritage

The modern water industry grew in response to the rising demand for water caused by industrialisation and consequent concentrations of urban populations. By the early nineteenth century, these were starting to overwhelm traditional sources of drinking water and customs of waste removal, resulting in repeated epidemics of waterborne diseases, referred to by environmental historians as the Sanitary Crisis. A new infrastructure for collecting, distributing and treating water was assembled and in many cases retrofitted to the larger cities and subsequently extended to urban landscapes everywhere. Early modern patchworks of local water supply gradually meshed and led to the development of the modern network city. In helping to overcome the Sanitary Crisis and enabling later urban growth to proceed without the suffering encountered during the nineteenth century, water infrastructure made a major contribution to human development, which should be recognised.