Sewage disposal / report of a committee appointed by the President of the Local Government Board to inquire into the several modes of treating town sewage.

Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sewage disposal / report of a committee appointed by the President of the Local Government Board to inquire into the several modes of treating town sewage. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    water ; moving from the seat is to permit it to fall down again and discharge the contents. Our experience is that self-acting apparatus soon ceases to have any action. The excreta which is pumped to the central station is in a fluid state necessarily, and is put into barrels and sent away to the country, involving trouble, cost, and inconvenience in several forms. The manure is too rich to distribute over grass-land in very dry weather without dilution, and it is too bulky to carry long distances. It is proposed to dry it; this process must, however, greatly reduce any remuneration to be obtained by sale. At present farmers have tried the manure, and have paid at a rate of 8d. per 32 gallons, or 65. 8d. per ton; but this price was soon abandoned, the price being reduced to 2d. per 32 gallons, or Is. 8d. per ton ; and ultimately, after further trial, this arrangement ceased, as it was found to be necessary to remove the excreta daily or at other short intervals, because it was not convenient for the farmer either to store it or to use it; and in winter, during frost, the barrels in store were frozen and burst.* Eemarks on the Pneumatic System. Captain Liernur has been particularly fortunate in having the manure which his system produces tried in Holland, as the use, application, and storage of liquid-manure is much better under- stood there than in England. A considerable number of the farmers in Holland grow no straw, consequently, the manure made by the cattle in winter has to be utilized in a liquid state. In England this liquid-manure is generally absorbed by the straw, or by other bedding upon which the cattle stand. Some 20 years ago there was a general movement amongst English farmers for applying the drainage from farm-yards to the land, and tanks, pumps, and liquid-manure carts were, for a time, in great request; but the application of this farm-sewage produced so little result in proportion to the cost, that pumps and carts for this purpose are now seldom used upon arable farms. We are confident that the liquid which is collected at such cost in barrels would find no ready sale in England, even at a very low price, and we further believe that any English farmer agreeing to take it continuously from any town would not only not pay anything for it, but would certainly charge something considerable for his trouble and for the expence of removal. If the towns of Holland, or portions of such towns, by reason of peculiarities of site and climate, cannot be sewered on English principles, and if the pneumatic system is as cheap as any of the moveable pail systems, it may be the best under such conditions for Holland, because if worked in accordance with the rules laid down the excreta will be removed daily without the intervention, trouble, and dirt involved in the pail system. The pneumatic system only deals, however, with a small fraction of the refuse to be removed from houses leaving all other forms of refuse to be dealt with in the ordinary way, so that Dutch town-sewage must flow into the rivers and canals as now, to pollute the water-supply ; or,