Report of the State board of health of Massachusetts on water-supply and sewerage : under the provisions of chapter 274, of the acts of 1886.

  • Massachusetts Department of Public Health
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the State board of health of Massachusetts on water-supply and sewerage : under the provisions of chapter 274, of the acts of 1886. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    57/118 page 41
    The effluent t]irouo:li Bennington soil, five feet deep at the rate of 61,000 gallons per acre per day, Dr. Frankland said was almost as good as London water. The quantities of sewage applied in intermittent filtration, in which we have satisfactory analyses of the effluent, are those of experiments on material in glass tubes having areas from three square inches to eighty-seven square inches, and the amount of sewage applied and satisfactorily purified varied from 30,000 gallons per acre per day to 80,000 gal- lons per acre, upon a bed five feet deep. One soil tested failed to purify the lesser amount. The amounts repoiled as applied to various filter beds in England and on the Continent are from 3G,000 to 90,000 gallons per acre per day, but the analyses of the effluent when given are not so satisfactory as those obtained in the laboratories. From tliese results it appears that filter beds, if of proper material, can purify ten or twelve times as much sewage per acre as can be applied to our farm lands in irrigation. It is upon the basis of these results that we must enter upon experiments to determine the amount of sewage we can in this climate purify with sucli material as is deposited in our valleys. At present no one can tell in regard to any area that may be selected the character of the effluent that will result from the application of sewage in large or small quantity, nor the efl'ect of our winters nor of long storms upon the effi- ciency of the bed, nor the proper intervals for application. This knowledge can be obtained only by trial and careful observation. To make such trials in the most economical way to obtain reliable information and actual additions to the knowledge of the world upon this subject for immediate and urgent use in this State, the Board of Health has es- tablished an experimental station and is now actively pur- suing the investigation in regard, first to the soils, sands and gravels to be found in its neighborhood, afterward to be replaced by those which may be proposed for such use in other localities.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3