The water question : a letter, addressed (by permission) to the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Derby, K.G., explaining a proposal for the supply of the metropolis from the higher sources of the Thames in conjunction with the storage of surplus waters / by J. Bailey Denton.

  • John Bailey Denton
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The water question : a letter, addressed (by permission) to the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Derby, K.G., explaining a proposal for the supply of the metropolis from the higher sources of the Thames in conjunction with the storage of surplus waters / by J. Bailey Denton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    on an annual payment of £1,000 each; both the proceedings of the Commission and the arrangement of tlie Committee being based on the assumption that it is practically possible to prevent the ijollution of rivers. My Lord, tliis is a fallacy that we cannot too soon nor too thoroughly realise. Tlie only way by which the rivers can be maintained in their aboriginal purity, and in a condition fit to drink, is to exclude from them, wholly and completely, contaminating fluids; but, inasmucli as all fluids flow to the lowest place, and rivers occupy the lowest place in all water sheds, with the sea as their ultimate destination, it is obviously impossible to prevent the use of rivers for carrying ofl^, in some shape or other, the refuse liquid of tlie towns and lands within their water sheds. The Kivers Com- mission, seeing this insurmountable difficulty, adopted the views of a previous Commission for inquiring into the best mode of distributing the sewage of towns, and recommended that irriga- tion should be employed, as the best mode of lessening the obnoxious character of refuse fluids before they anive at their natural destination. They state in their very admirable report, that all expedients for disposal of town sewage other than by application to land, seem to us, on one ground or another, objectionable. They declare that scAvage water, if passed ^' over a siifficient area of grass land^ passes off^ hriglttj tasteless^ and loithout smelV ] and add, that irrigation will be found to be the mode of dealing with sewage which results in the largest amount of good to the land, and the smallest amount of harm to flowing water. On these conclusions the country is now called upon to act. Irrigation as a means of purifying rivers. There is no doubt that of all processes of filtration, that by irrigation is the most efi'ective. It is, however, far fi'om a per- fect process; though it has advantages which commend it to the attention of the country. All persons admit that, whatever ingredients are extracted from sewage in its passage over or * The terms here used would imply that it is only necessary to run sewage oiier land, and that the Coniuiissioners do not consider natural or artificial undcr-drainage essential. This appnars to be erroneous, and likely to defeat the object in view, for surface vegeta- tion, though it acts as an upturned brush to arrest a large part of the solid, with power to appropriate a part of the soluble matter, is not so effective as a bed of drained soil with a growth of vegetation ujion it, through which the sewage can percolate. In such case the whole of the solid and a larger proportion of the soluble matter will be taken up and retained. Indeed, without uTider-drainage, natural or artificial, irrigation cannot be fully successful.