THE LONDON WATER SUPPLY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5209, 1 December 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE LONDON WATER SUPPLY.

(From the Commercial Advertiser.) “ Water, water everywhere, but not a drop (fit) to drink,” has been the unceasing cry for something like a quarter of a century past; and each year it has increased in vehement, until at length it has been he ird and answered, and that answer is a proposal to provide London witli the modest supply of 10,000,000 gallons of cooking and drinking water per day, and at a pressure which 4ooft above the Thames would produce ; the mains to be always charged, each house being supplied from them with, water ly means of airtight press receivers, holding from two to ten gallons, and that hydrant jets should he placed in connection with the mains at short distances apart ; in short, a really practicable scheme lias been drawn up by £Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and his coadjutors, Messrs. Brnmwell and Easton, to procure a supply from borings to be made in the water-bearing strata to the north and south of the metropolis. Its chief advantages as compared with previous schemes are, that it would entail no very excessive expenditure, and it would interfere as little as I ossible w.th the existing arrangements of the water companies. The drinking water of each house would be free from all liability to contamination. It would no longer be allowed to stagnate in filthy cisterns, or to be charged with sewer g is from untrapped overflow pipes. It would in fact be supplied to each house as pure, as sparkling, and as cold as its source. The boon conferred on the dwellers in the metropolis would be inestirnaVe, and unless medical science is a myth, typhoid fever would soon become a rarity among them, and cholera an impossibility. Of course there will be obst cles, and wc shall read columns of stuff of which the burden will be the vested interests of the txi-ting companies, and although every dog has its day, that day has an end, even though it be—as that of the water companies ha*—the longest.