THE CLEANEST CITIES

Southland Times, Issue 21097, 31 May 1930, Page 8

THE CLEANEST CITIES

PALM GIVEN TO PARIS. NEW YORK A BAD LAST. New York, May 1. Personal observation in the largest cities in the Old and New World discloses that Paris is the cleanest. The air is clean, the streets are clean, and there is an abundance of clean water. Except in time of storm not a drop of water enters the Seine in the city limits. London, victim of fog and smoke pall, has not the cleanliness of Paris. Each of the 29 boroughs has a separate cleansing department, possessing) no uniform or coordinated system of street cleaning or removal of household waste. But all make a noble effort, and the city looks clean at all times. ..

Berlin’s remarkable cleanness is a result of preventive, rather than corrective, work. People do not litter the pavements. The civic authorities, with the aid of intelligent police, taught them. When one drops his newspaper in the street, the policeman 'collects a mark from him by way of warning. If he objects the Court may fine him fifty. In the course of a year only 2000 marks are collected. New York tanks as the dirtiest of the world’s great cities visited. The head of the new sanitation commission reports that he found the streets “ranging from dirty to filthy,” and that 60 per cent, of the equipment is out of order and unserviceable. Sea dumping of garbage converts health resorts along the beaches into unsanitary places, which it is disagreeable to visit; the failure of householders to separate garbage from ashes makes the extensive' city ash dumps a source of continuing nuisance to hundreds of thousands of people. Sewage in Paris is carried out into the country. Berlin takes it to nearby sandy plains, where it is used to fertilize gardens, which send fruit and vegetables back to the city. London transports her sewage to Barking and Crossness, eleven and thirteen miles below London Bridge, where she settles it and sends the solids far out to sea in steamships. New York has never adopted any plan or policy for the sanitation of her waterways. She dumped her garbage into Upper New .York Bay until the United States Government put a stop to it. To-day she discharges her sewage through 450 outlets along her shores. Chicago has built a drainage canal to the Illinois River to carry off her sewage, and is now constructing purification works for the treatment of these wastes.