BY LIEUT.-COL. ALFRED S. JONES, V.C.
ASSOC. M. INST. C.E., ETC.
[Sidenote: Introductory remarks.]
“How extremely simple it all is!” was the remark of a recent visitor
at a sewage farm—which encourages me to venture on publication of the
most recent discussions on a “problem” complicated by engineers,
chemists, bacteriologists and inventors of systems, who have raised
clouds of dust through which it is difficult for ratepayers and
district councillors to find their way to “the best practical and
available means of sewage disposal.”
I have a belief that publication of all attempts to purify _the whole_
of a town’s sewage, rather than small scale experiments with equations
founded on such data, is the desideratum.
[Sidenote: 1872.]
Having begun in the year 1872, with a pamphlet, “Will a Sewage Farm
Pay?”[2] I desire to proceed with the present one thirty years later,
as my humble contribution to a right understanding of the intelligent
Scavenger’s business.
At the earlier date agriculture was prosperous, and ratepayers of
Exeter were just as confident that sewage farming would bring large
dividends as some of the same city’s councillors are at present not in
the least sceptical that their engineer’s septic system is the true
specific for sewage disposal.
In adhering to land as the natural and best agent, I have had the
support of the Local Government Board with that of many Royal
Commissions, notably the one now sitting, and I have naturally chosen
cases where suitable land was accessible when I desired to demonstrate
the efficiency and simplicity with which the powers of Nature can be
applied for the use and convenience of man.
Nor have I failed to study all “artificial” substitutes for the best
means, wherever difficulties of obtaining suitable land presented
themselves, e.g. my Canvey Island scheme for dealing with the sewage
of London on a relatively small area, and other cases.
Of late years I have welcomed the light thrown on this subject by
bacteriologists, but lamented extravagant statements put forward by
those who fail to see that the previously unrecognised microbes can do
their work, as they have always done it, to most advantage in the
upper layers of any porous land.
[Sidenote: 1902.]
An interim report by Lord Iddesleigh’s Royal Commission has, however,
awakened such theorists to the fact that land is not to be discarded
because it may not bring in a profit or because patentees of systems
find it to their interest to contrast neglected or badly managed
sewage farms with carefully nursed little experimental installations
for artificial treatment of selected samples of sewage.
Recognising the marvellous improvements in arts and manufactures of
all kinds due to steam, chemistry and electricity, the public has
naturally expected similar results from applied science in artificial
sewage treatment, and there has been no lack of study of every
imaginable process during the last thirty years.
[Sidenote: 1884. Lord Bramwell’s Royal Commission establishes
principles.]
But the late Lord Bramwell’s Royal Commission on Metropolitan Sewage
Discharge established two very important points of general
application, namely:—