BOARD OF WORKS DEBENTURE BILL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 127, 1 June 1870, Page 2

BOARD OF WORKS DEBENTURE BILL.

To the Editor of the Nelson Evening Mail. Sir— The Colonist of yesterday seems to have been incorrectly instructed by the opponents of the above measura regarding the circumstances of the Edinburgh system of Thatßystem has been made to carry and distribute itself for the last 200 years. The Craigentinny meadows were originally prolongations of the sea beach, and worth 5s au acre. They are flooded ten or twelve times a year with the sewage of the city, which, after saturating the soil with its fertilizing constituents flows off thus filtered from its impurities into the Frith of Forth. The success of the experiment has not only resulted in a satisfactory deodorization of the sawage, but commercially in raising the value of the land from 5s to £30 per acre per annum. In Londou, not a great many years a*o, the night-soil of the cesspools was regularly emptied — mixed with a3hes and removed at once to the fields. But the invention of water-closets destroyed this organisation. The sawage was turned into the drains constructed to carry the rainfall only, and thence escaped into the Thames. The river in consequence was polluted, and the fish were poisoned as far as its tidal flow extended. This was to a certain extent a retrogressive step — the creation of a gigantic nuisauce, and the establishment of a perpetual drain of a most . valuable fertilizing agent. So ntolerable did the nuisance become that a i

new system for the main . drainage of London became an; imperative necessity ■ — a portion of which is now completed whereby the sewage is diverted from the Thames, conveyed to Barking Creek, and there employed to improve the low-lying lands in Essex, in a similar manner io those adjoining the Frith of Forth. In Manchester the new sewage works serve only for rain or street water excluding excrements and house drainage. Into the Parisian sewers— many of which are 18ft wide by 18ft high— -no solid excrements are allowed to be thrown, they only carry off all other sewage matters including the rainfall. It has been said that "one fact is worth a thousand arguments," here are four. Hut quantum sufficit of a nasty subject. I am, &c, Hygiene.