SOLUTION OF THE WATER AND SEWAGE QUESTION. THE protracted discussion
on the water supply of London has had the benefit of disposing of many unsound projects without the cost and vexation of actual trial. Artesian wells, without boring, have ceased to be relied upon as an adequate resource. Numerous aqueducts that have been planned for obtaining a purer element from the tributaries of the Thames have been found on inquiry liable to grave objections. In this way the Lea and Brent have -been given up, because of the unusual amount of urban and agri- cultural drainage they receive; the Colne, for the same reason, and on amount of its paper-mills, which pollute water more than any other manufacture; the Wey is inadmissible on engineering .,Founds ; the Wandle, Verulam, and similar minor ailments, are insufficent for the purpose.
By a different class of schemes all reliance on the second-hand cooperation of large or small streams is dispensed with, and resort lad to the springs which feed them. But of the two leading pro- jects of this sort neither is wholly free from impeachment. The waters proposed to be brought from the springs at Bushy Mea- dows are unobjectionable except from extreme hardness, which by nr. Clark's lime process admits of easy remedy; but the quantity -t could be obtained would be insufficient, the Watford company 'lig only to supply the North-western part of the Metropolis. In the next, proposed by the Board of Health, the supply has been computed by its surveyors to be enough, and the water remarkably soft, varying from 1 to 2, 4, and 6 degrees of hardness. But vari- ous additional considerations besides quality and quantity must be carefully weighed, and satiseartorily cleared up, ere the springs of Bagshot Heath can be accepted as a perfectly reliable substitute.
First, the Bagshot water, though soft, is exceptionable, from the ' presence of iron and excess of carbonic acid : the last would cor- rode the iron and lead pipes and cistern. Next, are the recent gaugings of Messrs. Napier and Racame,ll, of a daily supply of 61,000,000 of gallons, wholly unimpugnable and conclusive ? Their estimate may have been correct for last year, but would it hold for this year or a series of years ? Springs are often of mysterious origin and devious course ; and it would require not one season but a cycle of seasons, both dry and humid, to test their average capa- bilities. All the deep wells sunk in London and its vicinity, at the large breweries, at Brentford, Fulham, and Chiswick, have disappointed expectation by their lessening supplies : each new well lowers the level of the water in its neighbour, and the water- level in the chalk for the last twenty-five years has been sinking at the rate of two feet per annum. The uncertainty of subterra- neous sources is further corroborated by a stronger example. The city of Edinburgh has made the experiment of water-springs : the Pentland Hills were fixed upon for a supply, and have been tried for thirty years; but, after unceasing additions to the first outlay, have been found unsatisfactory from precariousness and insuffi- ciency. The bare outline of the Bagshot scheme presents startling fea- tures. The district of Surrey fixed upon is twenty-five miles in length and twenty-four in extreme breadth ; forming an area of three hundred square miles' including fertile tracts of country, with several towns, villages, and hamlets. Within these limits are four distinct areas' drained by between sixty and seventy streams, twenty-one of which flow into the Wey, nineteen into the Loddon, six into the Bourne Brook, and one into the Mole, exclusive of another large area whose streams are not specified. By inter- cepting these tributaries, the requisite supply for London might possibly be obtained ; but by what sacrifice ? what would be the
effect produced on the and town economy of the locality subjected to so stringent a course of depletion ? This is one pro- spective consideration ; and others not less impressive are, the amount of compensation that would be due to damaged local inte- rests, and the extent of the engineering works requisite for col- lecting the contents of so many streams and by some vast conduit pouring them into the metropolitan basin. Upon the face of it, the Bagshot project appears so hazardous and inappreciable in its contingencies that it does not seem, in its existing stage of deve- lopment, to c;d1 for closer investigation. But this cursory notice of the two descriptions of schemes has the advantage of narrowing the water question to what may be considered its primitive stab's. For the supply of a great metropolis a great natural river seems alone commensurate ; but it is not present demands only that are to be met—there are proximate future wants from the increase of London; and to satisfy these different needs, what can be more obviously fit than the volume of the Thames constantly flowing mid-way through the longest axis of the capital ? If this be conceded, we may at once cease to speculate on minor streams or their springs, and concentrate attention on the one great channel, and the points of its course most eligible to fix upon. For compassing this more circumscribed issue two plans are be- fore the public, and are likely ere long to be 'before Parliament. They both avoid the London sewage, by taking their supplies thirty or forty miles above it—from Mapledurb.am or Henley. Into the relative merits of these schemes we shall not presume to enter. By resorting to Mapledurham the drainage of Reading is avoided; but countervailing benefits of a better water are urged on the side of Henley. Neither, however, nor indeed any scheme, holds out the hope of pure water, only of water comparatively bet- ter than that in use ; and both would require great length of time and outlay in €xecution. Under such deferred or dubious aspects, we shall venture to submit a third resource, which at least would be more promptly available, and by cooperating with existing works and machinery be much less expensive. Besides a supply of wider of the requisite quantity and purity, another important condition it is essential, if possible, to cumbine, - —namely, the abatement of the present nuisance of the constant outpourings of the London sewers into the Thames, to the great detriment of its navigation and the health of the inhabitants of the Metropolis. Neither the Henley nor Mapledurham plan grapples with this desideratum, and to supply it forms a leading feature of the proposition we are about to explain. The problem to be dealt with is this. From one hundred and forty-one public sewers between London and Battersea Bridges, the refuse from two millions of people and innumerable manufactories is discharged into the Thames ; and this polluted mixture, after un- ceasing agitation by river craft and the ebb and flow of the tide, is again pumped up for the use of the richest city in the world. The monster evil is the sewage; the remedy its inhibition ; and any com- bination by which this last can be effected would obviate the chief objections urged to the use of Thames water, and by consequence to the present gigantic works by which the existing supply, or a greater, is or might be provided.
At once, then, we address ourselves to a new disposal of the sew- =as. means of transport, and collection in its way to the - Railways in this as in many other public improvements will lend auxiliary aid, and the North of England afford a useful lesson to the South. At Newcastle-on-Tyne the town's refuse has been for some years conveyed to the common moor, whence it is carted sway by the farmers of Morpeth and other places who pay 48. 67. per cart-load for it. The York and Berwick Railway has become the medium of a more improved arrangement : the Company itself superintends the traffic ; the refuse is carted to the railway, along which it is transported in vehicles at the most suitable hours, and it is now delivered in the agricultural districts at 28. 6d. per ton. The farmers of Northumberland use the whole of the refuse of Newcastle, and the demand exceeds the supply,
Is not this a hint for London and its existing water companies, if not a caveat against a too precipitate formation of new ones P What needs prevent the sewage of the Metropolis being made available for an extensive course of remunerative farming in the country? But how—how collect it—or how transport it to the desired points ? Steam-engines, dams, raising-pumps, and settling- reservoirs at or near the outlet of the sewers, would, we apprehend, satisfactorily meet the first difficulty. The second requires more detailed exposition, and is the chief novelty contemplated. The coal-trade of London forms the largest branch of coast traffic. Of the three million tons and upwards of coals annually consumed in the Metropolis, about eleven-twelfths are supplied by the collieries of Durham and Northumberland. The ships ac- tually employed in bringing coals from the North are about 2700, with eight men to a ship, and an average cargo of nearly 300 tons. In 1848 thernwere 2717 ships employed, which brought to Lon- don 12,269 cargoes, amounting to 3,418,310 tons.
The unloaded coal-ships must return to Newcastle; and as there are not cargoes sufficient from London to freight them, they must take in ballast to make the ships heavy enough to sail in safety. This ballast is chiefly gravel or sand, dredged up from the bed of the Thames near Woolwich. The captain, when ready to sail, ap- plies to the Ballast-office, and the required weight of ballast is sent to his ship in lighters belonging to the Trinity House, the captain paying so much per ton for it. About eighty tons are re- quired on the average for each vessel ; and the quantity supplied by the Trinity House is about 10,000 tons per week. This is not all the ballast required ; some ships are ballasted with chalk taken from Flatfeet. When the ship reaches the Tyne, the ballast is of no further use; but it must not be emptied into that river : it has therefore to be deposited on its banks, where huge mounds have been heaped up two or three hundred feet high.
These explanations bring us to the main proposition. In lieu of ballasting the coal-ships with the gravel of the Thames it is proposed that they shall be ballasted with the sewage of London. In favour of this commutation the following reasons may be urged.
First, in place of the coal-ships conveying a worthless article—a nuisance in fact—to the North, they would be freighted with a marketable commodity, for which there already exists a demand beyond the supply, and which demand might be indefinitely ex- tended by the radiation of railways from Newcastle into the North- ern. agricultural districts and the Lothians of Scotland. Ship- owners would be benefited in two ways by the change,—in saving the money they now pay to the Trinity House for ballast, and She expense they incur per ton for its removal from their vessels, by a railway constructed for the purpose, to the Tyne banks, where it is a growing encumbrance.
The benefits to London would be more considerable. By the re- moval of its sewage a great step would be made in sanatory im- provement; the chief knot in the water question would be untied, Use Thames saved from further pollution, and its navigation from detriment. Lastly, the arrangement suggested has the further re- commendation that it can hardly be considered speculative, or seriously expensive : the chief apparatus is already in existence- unfreighted ships, lighters, and lightermen ; it might be tried either on a large or on a small scale, by one or more of the princi- pal sewers ; and if the scheme were found successful, it would not require the abandonment of established works, but would cooper- ate in rendering them more efficiently and less objectionably useful and sanative.
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