History

By 1982 the Delling Municipal Waterworks Board faced the replacement of the town's 1931 riveted standpipe, and promptly deadlocked. One faction favored a novelty tank in the shape of an ear of corn, citing tourism; the other favored the lowest conforming bid, citing the budget. The impasse held for five meetings until board member Everett Kahle, a retired agricultural statistician, proposed a third course: that Delling build neither the most remarkable tower in Iowa nor the cheapest, but the exact average of all of them, and thereby be first in something no town had thought to pursue.

The board commissioned a survey of the state's 917 municipal water towers, tabulating height, capacity, leg count, catwalk width, paint reflectance, and forty-one other characteristics. The resulting Composite Specification called for a 127-foot elevated tank of 498,000 gallons on the mean number of legs (four, rounded from 4.2), finished in solid silver-gray — solid because 61 percent of Iowa towers were unpatterned, and silver-gray because that was the computed average of all recorded tank colors. A Mean Specification Subcommittee was seated to review every shop drawing against the survey, and did so, meeting eleven times.

Marquart Tank & Iron Works erected the tower in 1984–85 for $611,400, a figure the board's annual report notes fell within 0.3 percent of the average cost of comparable towers built that biennium — 'not intentional, but welcome.' The project's principal setback came when the steel supplier delivered shell plate two millimeters thicker than specified, a deviation the subcommittee minutes record as 'above average, and therefore unacceptable.' After a six-week delay and a recorded 3–2 vote, the plate was accepted with reservations, on the grounds that rejecting it would put the project over the average schedule as well.

The tower was profiled by Tank & Standpipe Quarterly in 1991 and has appeared in three trade calendars, each time in a middle month. When a 1997 resurvey found that the statewide mean had drifted — the average Iowa tower was by then 1.4 feet taller — the board voted 4–1 against raising the tank, adopting the formal position that the tower is average 'as of 1983, as posted.' A plaque at the base lists the tower's measurements alongside the corresponding state means, in two columns, matching.

Local Legends

Residents maintain that Delling's water tastes 'unremarkable in a way other towns can't get to.' The utilities department notes that Delling draws from the same aquifer as four neighboring towns and has offered no further comment.

It is said that on foggy mornings the tower cannot be told apart from any other tower in Iowa, and that this was the point. The board has never disputed this.

Some residents claim Everett Kahle climbed the catwalk once a year to confirm the view was ordinary. Family members say he simply liked the catwalk.

The Controversy

In 2002 a hobbyist in a neighboring county published measurements suggesting that the water tower in Percher, Iowa, was in fact 0.6 percent closer to the statewide mean than Delling's. The Waterworks Board disputed the methodology, noting the analysis used the drifted 1997 means rather than the posted 1983 baseline. The state took no position. The two towns' newspapers exchanged editorials for a month and the matter is considered settled in Delling.

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