Looking Backward

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4340, 24 November 1908, Page 2

Looking Backward

(Continued) Foe manifestly tlie thing will have to be done. The defects of our sanitary system are much too grave to be shelved. Take the lagoon which is now lying stagnant at the lower end of Kenrick-stre< t. Here we have a pestilential area of hourly accumulating sewage, comprising some acres of the Bridge Domain. This immense cesspool is fee from the Kenrickstreet sewer, which is at present carrying the sewage from one of our largest hotels, also from one of our stables and the washouse of a large boarding-house. The hotel and stable sewage ought in any case to be connected with the main sewer, which is conveyed into the Waihou River. What makes the present condition of the Kenrick-strect sewer particularly dangerous to the health of the community is that, in anticipation of the work which will need to be done in connection with the approaches to the new bridge, the drain ras been shortened, and instead of being carried well away from the street it is emptied into the lagoon immediately below the residential area, in fact, almost at the garden gate of the last house in Kenrick-street. There it stagnates, depending chiefly upon the process of evaporation for conveyance away. For, if any resident will take the trouble to go and ascertain for himself, he will note that ihe open cut a little farther over upon the lagoon has not sufficient fall to provide an outlet to the accumulation of the lagoon. In fact, it is all but completely silted up. It is purely another estuary of sewage, another open drain, serving a stable, a ginger beer factory, the railway buildings, another swamp at the rear of a boardinghouse, and inferentially that boardinghouse also, to say nothing of the general excess of sewage unaccommodated by the main sower. Being open, in its journey to the lagoon it is serving to wash away the properties through which it flows (a most unjust thing), and as it pours itself into, but not out of, the lagoon, it abundantly augments the foulness there accumulated. That portion of it which flows through the town ought to be closed at once, before the properties through which it flows are wholly carried away. The open cut in the lagoon ought to be thoroughly cleared and deepened, so as to provide a sufficient fall and then abundantly flumed. The Kenrick-street sewer would require to be connected with it and so both would-be carried off iuto the Waihou. It will be remembered that this deepening and fluming the cut and connecting with the Kenrick-street sewer was what Mr Franklin recommended some time ago, in fact what he stated was imperative. Yet the Borough Council with the exception of two members decided to shelve the matter, probably not reflecting that by the time we have induced a serious outbreak of typhoid, not t-1 say typhus, and put back the prosperity of Te Aroha by a season or two, in addition to sacrificing some lives, the locking of the stable door will be a trifle nugatory. It is probably not generally known that in a temperature of say eighty degrees there is practically no movement of the atmosphere, hence soldiers on the march often fall fainting out of line simply from the effects of inhaling the river of carbonic acid gas exhaled by their comrades in the van. Hence we see what an exhalation we shall have clinging about the atmosphere in the summer which is already upon us. Of other matters affecting the sanitation of Te Aroha, it is now certainly time to speak. The huge colonies of fowls which are ran in our back yards, present an evil which cries aloud for redress. Fever has already resulted here from this cause. And the great annoyance created by their nightly clamour is simply unendurable. Visitors complain bitterly about this evil. The ill savor of it has travelled down the line to our detriment; and it is high time that the nerve racking screech of our nocturnal performers were abated by some efficient municipal legislation.