Comparison of Methods of Sewage PurificationPhillips, Theodore Clifford
Science
Comparison of Methods of Sewage Purification
Phillips, Theodore Clifford
Sewage -- Purification
Perhaps the most noticeable examples of this system that are now in
operation in the United States are the plants at the State Hospital of
the Insane, Worcester, Mass., at the Rhode Island State Institute, and
at the Reformatory at Concord, Mass. In all cases the labor was done by
the inmates so that it is not possible to get a fair statement of the
cost. General information regarding the use of sewage for irrigation in
the west may be obtained from Baker and Rafters’ “Sewage Disposal in the
United States”.
Undoubtedly the best example of sewage farming is at Berlin. The
following summary is given by James H. Fuentes, M. Am. Soc. C. E., in
No. 2. Vol. 40 of the Engineering Record. The average quantity of sewage
pumped to the farms and distributed amounts to from 6,000,000 to
7,000,000 gallons per acre per year, or in other words each acre serves
for 750 people. The area farmed is divided into small beds about 150 by
200 feet separated from each other by slight embankments and ditches for
distributing the sewage over the surface. The sewage is admitted into
the carriers from the force mains through checking chambers made of
woven willow and posts driven into the sand.
The farms are said to yield small profits over the expenses of working
them, consequently contribute scarcely anything toward the cost of
pumping the sewage.
The great reason why this method of disposal has been possible and
profitable in a degree at Berlin is that this large and beautiful city
lies in the midst of an extensive sandy area, the greater part of which
in the immediate neighborhood is quite sterile and therefore
comparatively thinly populated. Better conditions for such sewage farms
could not exist.
Statistics compiled by Chas. S. Swan, M. Am. Soc. C. E. in his paper,
Notes on European Practice in Sewage Disposal, in Jour. Assn. of Eng.
Soc. Vol. 7 No. 7 shows the volume of sewage per acre per day (yearly
average) to vary from 2155 to 29450 gallons, and the average depth per
annum varies from 2.4 to 32.8 feet.
The nineteenth annual report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health
1888 states that on an ordinary farm in Massachusetts 2500 gallons per
acre per day are as much as could be applied to any valuable grass crop.
This would require such a large area for large cities that irrigation
could not be depended upon for preventing the pollution of streams.
It is evident from the above report that the irrigation system can be
used to advantage only where large tracts of low land can be obtained at
a low cost, and where help and plenty of cheap labor can be obtained.
_Intermittent Downward Filtration_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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