Detroit’s trusted water company

Culligan Quench bottleless water coolers.

Take on-demand hydration to the next level. Culligan Quench bottleless water coolers and ice machines use advanced filtration and sanitization technologies such as carbon filtration and reverse osmosis to remove sediment, reduce lead and other chemical contaminants, and get rid of off-tastes and odors. By providing filtered water through a broad array of machines, our bottleless water coolers offer users countless consumption choices.

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Detroit water quality: then

Detroit was founded at the narrowest point of the Detroit River, an abundant source of clean drinking water. Early settlers relied on a rudimentary water distribution system delivering daily to residents by horse-drawn carts. As the city grew, residents began drilling wells to supplement river sources. But the wells came up dry, and later attempts to create reservoirs to capture surface water also failed. Detroit turned to the example of major metropolises of the east, like New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, by creating pumping systems to bring clean river water to their residents.

In the 1840s, residents often dumped waste in the river, compromising Detroit’s water quality and causing water-borne diseases like typhoid fever. Not until the early 1900s did Detroit city engineers recognize the link between wastewater and illnesses. In 1912, the U.S. Public Health Service issued a mandate that required Detroit to disinfect all distributed water with calcium hypochlorite.

In 1916, treatment switched to chlorine, a more effective disinfectant. Detroit also constructed a new water intake point well away from the city’s wastewater dumping area, especially critical as the automotive industry began its explosive growth. Detroit’s population boomed from the car industry, so quickly that city planners rushed to install cast iron mains without a coherent plan. Pipelines clustered on top of each other in some sections of the city, while other areas lacked any mains at all.

Culligan Quench water coolers.

Worried about contaminants in your drinking water? We offer a full complement of water filtration and sanitization technologies to remove sediment, reduce chemical contaminants, including lead, and get rid of off-tastes and odors. Depending on your local water quality, your Water Expert may recommend our NSF-certified carbon filtration, which works great for water with TDS (total dissolved solids) levels under 250 ppm (parts per million) or our NSF-certified reverse osmosis (RO) filtration, which is the standard for water with TDS levels over 250ppm.