Purification of water-carried sewage : data for the guidance of corporations, local boards of health and sanitary authorities / by Henry Robinson and John Charles Melliss.

Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Purification of water-carried sewage : data for the guidance of corporations, local boards of health and sanitary authorities / by Henry Robinson and John Charles Melliss. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    proprietor of land, who uses it upon 50 acres, and pays the town council bl. for every acre that he irrigates, to the extent of 1,000,000 gallons per acre. The whole of the remainder (being the greater part) of the sewage flows direct into the mouth of the river Dee without any treatment. Aldershot Camp, Hampshire, has a domestic water- carried sewage of 7,000 adults, amounting to about 200,000 gallons a day. This is leased, and employed to irrigate 80 acres of a very porous sand, with a ferruginous subsoil situated at a distance of nearlv 2 miles from the J cam]), and which has been in operation for 14 years. Notwithstanding that the land is of the best quality for the purpose, and is in proportion of about 400 acres to a daily flow of 1,000,000 gallons of sewage, it is stated by the authorities that, although no nuisance has arisen from the effluent water, complaints have been made.1 The cost of working cannot be ascertained, and although it is quoted by Mr. Chalmers Morton 2 as an instance, he believes, of an agriculturally profitable farm to the tenant, its results, from a sanitary point of view, do not appear to be satisfactory, as may be gathered from the following statement of Mr. Eggar, who says:— ‘ Having the Aldershot sewage farm under his observation from day to day, he was able to speak confidently as to its being the most perfect success, in an agricultural point of view, of any in the kingdom. That was simply because the sewage was of the most concentrated character, and was only used about two days out of the seven on an average; every other day it ran straight into the Black- water, which was constantly silting up in consequence. Not long ago, an inspector from the Local Government Board came down to inspect it, and after going over the 1 Rocb. Ret., p. 5. 9 Report to the Nottingham and Leen District Sewerage Board, 1876.