MORE WATER FOR LONDON

Hokitika Guardian, 4 January 1930, Page 2

MORE WATER FOR LONDON

£1,060,000 PLANT OPENED. DROUGHT SAFEGUARD. LONDON, October 25. The Minister of Health, Mr Arthur Greenwood, yesterday opened the new Altering and pun.fping plant, probably the largest in the world, at Kempto.il Park, Sunbury on Thames. Jt will enable the Metropolitan Water Board to supply ■ an additional 24,000,000 gallons of water daily to North London. It has taken four years to build this station, at a cost of £1,660,000. Mr Greenwood first inspected the new filtration works, which are to purify the water from the 'Thames before it is (passed into" the 17 miles of 14in mains which carry it to the consumers. The water is cleared of coarse dirt by a battery of 24 sandfilled filters. Thence it passes to two filtering (beds filled with fine sand, and after a second filtration m these it is pumped into the mains by the two giant ttripfle expansion vertical .engines. 'V' Mr Greenwood told a reporter: The water needs of London are growing every year. Every new bouse has its bathroom, and more and more motor-ears are being used. I believe tile amount of water used in washing motor-ears in London would be sufficient for the ordinary consumption of a town of 20,060 inhabitants. The opening of this station means that the possibility of a shortage in times of drought it is now reduced to a bare minimum. Sir William Prescott, chairman of the Metropolitan Water Board, speaking at a luncheon at the station, said that during the recent drought the board’s difficulty had been that they could not pump and distribute a supply of water from the Thames to the 'necessitous parts of North London. “But now,” he said, “this pumping station will be another perpetual safeguard against restrictions in time of drought. People in London need have no fears that the future water supplies will be inadequate.”