THE ENGLISH WATER QUESTION.
"V i TE have no intention of entering upon the much- disputed question of the water-supply of East London. Whether the Company is to be blamed for not giving the consumers enough water, or pitied because it has not enough water to give them ; whether the provision is inadequate from the point of view of either health, comfort, or decency, or amply sufficient if only it were properly husbanded ; whether that constant supply which we have of late years learned to regard as the only perfect system should be maintained and extended, or give place to the old-fashioned cistern the value of which has only become known since it disappeared,—are points of great interest to the Company and its customers. But we have neither the material nor the wish to discuss them now. We shall only say in reference to the East London Water Company that we do not see why people should pay for water which has not been delivered, more than for any other goods in the same predicament. The Company is unable to supply as much water as usual because the sources from which it draws its supply have partially failed. The situation is not unknown in other trades. In them, too, the vendor is occasionally unable to execute the whole of an order given him. But in the latter case, he is not allowed to charge for the whole of the goods when he has only sent in a part, and we know of no reason why a different rule should be applied to a water company. If a particular water- rate is fair when the company are delivering water at all hours, it cannot be fair when they are only delivering water for four hours out of the twenty-four. The diminution of the supply may be no fault of the company's, but this dues not make it right that the consumer should bear the whole burden of their mis- fortune. That he does not get his usual quantity of water is discomfort enough for him. There is no need to subject him to the additional annoyance of having to pay for what he has never had. The East London Water Company would be wise in their generation if they were to make a large reduction in their charges for the period during which the supply has been curtailed. It would reduce their dividend, but it might give them a reserve of goodwill of which water companies are not unlikely to feel the need by and by.
What we have really in mind, however, is a very much larger question than the water-supply of a part of London, or even of the whole Metropolitan area. The present drought, following upon a succession of years in which the rainfall has been below the average, suggests the very unpleasant idea that water may not always be as abundant as we have been wont to regard it. We are familiar with the conception of a famine of bread, but though in the East this has for its natural com- plement a famine of water, it has not been so in this country. Among the conventional hardships of poverty we have never been wont to reckon the want of water. There has been some exaggeration and unreality in our satisfaction, since at all times there have been defects in local arrangements which have prevented water from being quite as common as we have liked to think it. But these defects have related not to the supply of water so much as to its distribution. There has been water in abundance, but the means of bringing it to the place where it is wanted have left more or less to be desired. What we are beginning, for the first time, to realise is the very much more serious prospect that the supply itself may not be inexhaustible. Serious as it is, however, there is more than one consideration which seems to point this way. First, and chiefly, there is the continually in- creasing demand upon the existing sources. For a time, perhaps for a long time, this demand may be met. The London water companies, for example, are constantly en- larging the areas from which they draw their water, and supplementing the millions of gallons they derive from the Thames and its tributaries by other millions drawn from new deep wells. As regards their own customers this plan may answer extremely well. The dry season is tided over, the constant supply is kept up, and those who complain that we are living from hand to mouth in regard to the chief necessary of life are for the moment silenced. But it is only for the moment. The dwellers in great cities are naturally the first to cry out when there is any scarcity of water. They depend on a vast artificial system, no part of which can break down without the consequences being immediately felt. But outside these great cities is another huge aggregate of human beings which depends for its water, not on any artificial system, but on natural springs and on the isolated wells which these springs feed. These natural springs and wells are directly affected by the efforts the water companies are making to supplement the sources on which they originally depended. The witnesses who appear before Royal Commissions and Select Committees may speak with confidence of the reserve which London, or any other great city, has in the wells which the companies are sink- ing to a greater and greater depth, and from the point of view of the great city this confidence may be thoroughly justified. But how about the small towns, the villages, and the isolated houses scattered over the district in which these deep wells are sunk ? Is there no connec- tion between the creation of that reserve from which this or that water company proposes to meet every demand that can be made on it, and the failure of the local supplies which have hitherto given these towns, and villages, and isolated houses the water they need ? We fear that there is a very close connection indeed. From all parts of the country there comes the same story of streams becoming shallower and more intermittent, of wells that have con- tinually to be dug deeper in order to get any water at all, of springs which once gushed out from the hillside and now do but trickle,—the mere ghosts of their former selves.
It is not, therefore, the inhabitants of our cities that have most cause for anxiety. They can get water from the great water-bearing areas, so that for them it is at most a matter of time and cost. The real sufferer in the future is likely to be the rural consumer, who wants water just as much as the townsman, but sees his means of getting it near at hand yearly growing less, while the cost of getting it from a distance remains prohibitive. He is the sufferer in this respect by the improvements of all kinds that are going on around him. The land is infinitely better drained. The water that once was left to slowly soak away is now carried off at once. What was formerly marsh or swamp is now hard ground. Hollows which used to remain pools for months together are now as dry as the surrounding level. The benefit to health is incalculable,. but it has not been gained without a corresponding loss. When the water stayed long on the land, it slowly filtered through the soil and fed the springs underneath. Now it is promptly intercepted by drain-pipes and carried off to the nearest stream. The stream is utilised in its turn as a source of supply for some distant city, and the village or the farmhouse is left to face a slowly but surely advancing water famine. The more favoured by Nature a district is the more surely and rapidly this process goes on. Where- ever mountain and rainfall combine to make an area rick in streams and lakes the engineer of some municipal cor- poration is at hand with the necessary plans for impound- ing the supply and carrying it a hundred miles away. Already there is a race between municipalities for the right of pre-emption of such areas. Soon there will be a race between them which shall soonest convert that right into the necessary miles of aqueduct or pipe. Thus from every point of view the water question daily grows more pressing. There is first the conflict of great cities among themselves, —a conflict which involves, among other things, the health and comfort of London at no very distant date. There is next the conflict between great cities and the rest of the country,—between wealth and energy, stimulated by a visible and pressing need, and the isolated but no less real wants of a scattered population, more numerous, it may be, than that of the city, but with no power of joint action. This is not a struggle that can safely be left to go on until the richest and most far- sighted of the combatants have come out conquerors. The weaker communities, the isolated atoms which are not gathered into communities, have each and all their claims on the State of which they are as much a part as the largest town. The whole subject of water-supply has still to be examined on a great scale and with reference to the country at large. It is not for London, or Manchester, or Liverpool that any alarm need be felt ; they are strong enough to take care of themselves. It is for the inhabitant& of Great Britain as a whole that there is most cause for concern ; and it is on their behalf that the Government ought to make the necessary inquiries and, undertake the necessary legislation.
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