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ONE

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1869.

TOWN SEWAGE

NE of the most imperative requirements of social life is some means of dealing with those waste products of the human mechanism which are dirt only while they remain out of their proper place, but are capable of becoming a source of serious inconvenience and injury whenever they are allowed to accumulate in the neighbourhood of dwellings, especially in densely populated places. In the case of isolated dwellings, and where the population is scattered, no great difficulty would be experienced in devising simple measures for disposing of this refuse so as to meet all requirements. But wherever the population is concentrated, the difficulty of dealing with house refuse, so as to prevent its becoming a nuisance, and, at the same time, to make it useful, is greatly increased. Partly on this account, and partly because neglected accumulations of house refuse are in the highest degree detrimental to health, the measures adopted in towns for dealing with house refuse have been subjected to the control of the municipal authorities, instead of being left to the option of the individual occupiers of houses; and in modern times it has come to be regarded as one of the first duties of such bodies to provide for the disposal of house refuse so as to preserve the health and life of the populations under their care. This sanitary axiom has indeed been forced into recognition by the ravages of epidemic disease, such as plague, fever, or cholera, and it may now be deemed unquestionable, except where ignorance overcomes intelligence, or where mistaken notions of economy prevail.

On sanitary grounds it has been decided, or, to say the least, very generally admitted, that the most efficient mode of dealing with house refuse is to remove it at once from dwellings, and by means of a copious use of water to sweep it away through underground channels outside of towns. In this way the domestic nuisances that were familiar during the early part of this century have been done away with, the town nuisance that arose from the use of cesspools has been suppressed, and the sanitary state of towns has generally been improved. But the removal of those nuisances has given rise to another one, affecting not only individual dwellings and towns, but the whole country. The continuous discharge of vast quantities of house refuse, distributed through great volumes of water into rivers and streams that are often sources of watersupply for domestic use, has rendered them so foul that this result of sanitary improvements is acknowledged to be a national nuisance, and one of the very highest importance in regard to public health.

Hence has arisen the question, What is to be done with town drainage? And this question still perplexes the Government, municipal authorities, river conservancies, and legal tribunals. In many instances the sanitary works carried out in towns at vast expense have given rise to serious nuisances at places lower down the streams into which the sewage is discharged; in other cases the execution of such works is prevented by prohibition against the discharge of sewage, and in some cases practices in direct opposition to legal enactment are tolerated because no remedy seems applicable.

So much for the difficulties attending the municipal object for getting rid of house refuse. It is now necessary to consider the subject in another light, and inquire what is the "right place" where house refuse is no longer to be regarded as dirt, but as material of value? How is it not only to be got rid of, but also turned to account and made useful? For this purpose it must be remembered that this waste material consists of the portions of our food which have done their work in the process of nutrition, and those portions of it which were not required in that process. In both cases plants are the source from which the constitutent parts of this material have been derived. Those plants again have abstracted them from the land on which they grew, not accidentally, but as an essential condition of their growth. Here, then, in this fact that the constituents of house refuse are essential for the growth of plants, lies the key to the sewage problem, a possibility for the utilisation of town sewage. Thousands of tons of the same substances that are constituents of house refuse are annually imported into this country for use as manure in agriculture-ammonia in the guano from Peru; phosphates, or bones and phosphatic minerals, from all parts of the world; potash from South America and Germany. Thousands of acres of land lie unproductive from want of these substances, and some of their most important sources are only of limited duration. Meanwhile the aggregate intrinsic value of those constituents in the house refuse of this country amounts to several millions annually.

There are, however, serious difficulties to be overcome before the economic object of utilising town sewage as manure in agriculture can be realised so as to fulfil all requirements involved in the municipal object of getting rid of it, and in the still more important sanitary object of preventing it from becoming a source of injury to the public health. These difficulties arise chiefly from the enormous dilution of the sewage, partly by the use of water for removing house refuse, and partly by the admixture of surface water and subsoil drainage. Generally speaking, the constituents of town sewage which have an intrinsic value as manure are so much diluted that a quantity of them which would be worth one shilling in the state of a dry solid like guano or bones, containing only a small proportion of less valuable admixture, is in sewage mixed with from six to ten tons weight of water. Therefore, in order to give land an ordinary dressing of manure in the form of town sewage, it is necessary to apply a very large bulk of that liquid. This can very often be done without any great trouble, especially when the town from which the sewage is discharged lies high, and is surrounded by cultivated land at a lower level; and even when this is not the case, the cost of pumping the sewage to a sufficient height, and the outlay for pumping works, would not generally be a serious obstacle to the application of town sewage as manure. However, the getting rid of sewage involves its continuous daily application to land; and here the municipal object is at variance with the agricultural object, of using the sewage only when it is wanted. Consequently, it would be necessary, in organising a general system of sewage utilisation, to establish a new system of farming; to grow crops specially suited for the frequent application of very dilute liquid manure, and to have the land laid out for cropping in such a manner that there may always be a