Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News. REFUSE AND SEWAGE DISPOSAL.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4443, 31 July 1909, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News.

REFUSE AND SEWAGE DISPOSAL.

this above all —to thine own self be true , And U must follow as the night the day Thou cwtet not then be false to any man Shakespeare. ~ SATURDAY, JULY U,

As population increases, the subject of sewage disposal becomes increasingly important, in fact the whole question of refuse disposal is a branch of sanitation that must scon engage the best attention of local bodies throughout the Dominion. Even in favoured eopptries like England, where the best expert knowledge can be obtained, and where for considerable periods experiments have been tried over a great area by independent research authorities, they find great difficulty in dealing jedth this subject. From time to.time we ?e&d of cases of litigation, where aggrieved citizens fjaffe (taken actions into'Court agaipst the local authorities, who have been mulcted in h©W damages for loss sustained through mb}}? neglect. Sometime* a public food? gets mulcted in whfafa large sum, if seietfllijjpally applied for sewage disposal, obviate such claims. One of the best methods of sew* age disposal is to carry out the whole operations without causing appreciable nuisance on the wortm or in the vicinity. The ideal method of treating sewage is discussed by two eminent mechanical, electrical, and civil engineers, who have made a study of this qiieiiiipP-

They have recently jointly written a book on modern methods of sewage disposal, being a practical handbook for the use of members of local authorities and their officials. We allude to Messrs W. H. Trentham and J. Saunders. , Members of local bodies incur great moral responsibility for the healthfulness of their district. Should illness or death result from neglect of proper precaution by those in authority, it is a life-long grief to conscientious men to remember the consiquenc2s their neglect or want of knowledge caused. Moreover there is a serious legal liability devolving upon the corporate body. In this latter respect we sometimes think that the Burgesses do not adequately enter into the true position of local governing bodies and afford them the sympathy and moral support they deserve for the discharge of their public dutiesSome duties are very onerous. There is one point we desire to emphasise, because we find that some people are taking too many liberties in that direction. It is not an uncommon thing to find a septic tank close to a house. That is a custom fraught with possible serious consequences, not only to those for whose immediate benefit the septic tank was constructed, but to innocent and unsuspecting neighbours. In all such matters citizens and burgesses are in duty, honour, and by law bound to consider others. Expert authority lays it down that it is dangerous to have such contrivances close to a house. The process in a septic tank, relying entirely on the decomposition of refuse, liberates large quantities of foul-smelling gases into the atmosphere, carrying with them myriads of micro-organisms, and, in addition to the obnoxious odour being a nuisance to the vicinity, the pato - genic organisms are deleterious to the health of the district. At times we have simply marvelled at the careless, primitive, and haphazard way in which, not only in some of the largest towns in Waikato, but even in some parts of the principal cities of the Dominion, they deal with sewage and refuse. The contamination of streams is a legal and moral offence. Many a hard-working farmer, having a wife and family dependent on him, has been stricken down with typhoid fever through drinking water from a stream which he had safely used for years but which, unknown to him, had been contaminated by careless people higher up the stream. Earth contamination also becomes dangerous at times. It is the bounden duty of every local authority, as of course it is to the interest of the district, to make the disposal of all sewage and refuse innocuous and inodorous. Where residents are careless, to the risk and prejudice of neighbours, the local authorities should not shrink from its duty of enforcing proper regard for the public welfare.