Interim report by the Works Committee of the Edinburgh and District Water Trustees.

Date:
[1870]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Interim report by the Works Committee of the Edinburgh and District Water Trustees. 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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    but are obliged to have recourse to contrivances for storing it. A Physician has neglected to show that the artificial lake into which Mr Leslie proposed to receive and detain the Heriot waters would not transmit them to us as mawkish, as un- aerated, of as unstable temperature, and as prone to be loaded with rotten vegetable organisms as St Mary's Loch, or any natural loch in the kingdom. On the superiority of a natural reservoir to an artificial one, all are agreed. Mr Bateman says (p. 18 of Interim Re- port by the Special Committee of the Corporations of Edin- burgh, Leith, and Portobello, dated 24th October 18G8) :— St Mary's Loch certainly appears a very desirable source of supply. Any natural lake in which the water is good, and which can be converted by artificial works at its outlet to pui'poses of water supply, is preferable to artificial reservoirs, which require time to construct, and which may be liable to other objections. Again, the same gentleman states (p. 32 of Report dated 4th February 18G9) :—There is this great advantage, however, in the St Mary's Loch scheme over the others, that you have to incur very small outlay to obtain the amount of storage required, and that the natural beach which the Loch itself now possesses will preserve the water from all injury and discoloration which would attend it if stored in large artificial reservoirs with clay or gravelly slopes, rising or felling according to the state of the weather, and exposing fresh surfaces for abrasion by the action of the wind. Mr Gale says (Interim Report, dated 2Gth October 1870, p. 19), Water drawn from artificial reservoirs, subject to considerable fluctuations in level, will always be less pure than that drawn from a natural loch Dr Frankland says (Ibid., p. 27), The advantages of a natural loch with a pebbly beach over an artificial reservoir are great, &e. You may r-emember that in the evidence I gave in 1869 before the Committee of the House of Lords, I spoke of the frequent yellow colour and loaded character of the Edin- burgh water—a part of my evidence which was impuo-ned by the other side. However, when Mr Leslie, the eno-fneer
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