Michael J. McGuire, author of “The Chlorine Revolution,” also maintains a blog, This Day in Water History. I have excerpted below the Florida portion of what he found about water treatment in the August 10, 2021 edition of the Municipal Journal (p. 153):

In his blog post, McGuire notes that many American cities were not disinfecting in 1916, even after “overwhelming evidence that typhoid fever and diarrheal diseases could be stopped by such a practice.” For Florida, only one of the eight cities surveyed acknowledged “sterilization” in water lines. Nowdays, that would be unacceptable for any major water system.