MMCA's history actually started around 400 BC in Greece where the first concept of public hygiene was recorded. The Greek physician, Hippocrates, developed a theory of early city planing based on access to clean water and public hygiene. Later the Romans advanced civilization through underground sewers and water supplied via aqueducts.

 

The "Dark Ages" where medieval town streets were also the town sewers did little to advance hygiene except to bring out the need for it. Then in 1596, it was Sir John Harinton's invention of the water closet for the Queen's Palace, Richmond that advanced hygiene technology.

 

In 1770 Benjamin Franklin is believed to have brought the first bathtub to America from France. Unfortunately the tub wasn't attached to any water supply and wouldn't be until iron piping was introduced and as early as the 1830s the use of iron piping was leading to stationary bathtubs attached to a collective water supply and disposal outlets leading to a collective sewage system.

 

By 1842 New York City and constructed the Croton system of reservoirs and aqueducts. This was followed by Chicago in 1855 and in 1857 the St. Paul Waterworks was franchised as a private corporation. Water supplied from Lake Phalen was brought three and one-half miles into the city through a 16-inch cement pipe. In 1882 the St. Paul Waterworks was purchased with control taken over by a board of water commissioners. Shortly thereafter, Lake Vadnais, ten feet higher than Lake Phalen, became the St. Paul water source.

 

Early residents of Minneapolis obtained their water from water wagons filled from the Mississippi River and from private wells. The first municipal action toward a city water supply came in 1867 when the Minneapolis City Council voted for the installation of a pump to draw water from the river into the lumber milling district. However, the outbreak of Typhoid Fever in 1910 that killed over 50 residents lead to the introduction of chlorine in the water and the construction of the filtration plant near the Columbia Heights reservoirs. With the plants opening in 1913, the residents of Minneapolis were supplied with purified water for the first time.

 

To support the technological changes, members of the piping industry formed a series of professional associations. In1974 the Mechanical Contractors Association of Minneapolis merged with the St. Paul Piping Industry Association to become the Twin Cities Piping Industry Association with the National Environmental Systems Contractors Association to join the next year. The purpose of merging was to establish one strong association, which could work more effectively toward common goals.

 

Through each incorporation the purpose has remained basically the same. The promotion of high quality workmanship, protection of the public health through adoption of adequate sanitary laws and harmonious business relationships. The three statements remain constant through each re-incorporation of the St. Paul association and are also common to both the Minneapolis and St. Paul organizations prior to their merging. Their purposes were to promote and maintain good employment and industrial relations, to educate the members of the industry in the principles of sanitation; to promote the standardization of fittings and other plumbing, heating and mechanical equipment/materials and to encourage and support an apprenticeship system with in the industry and the training of apprentices thereunder.

Chronology:

Pre 1900s

1900 to 1959

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s