Natural & Artificial Sewage TreatmentJones, Alfred Stowell
Science
Natural & Artificial Sewage Treatment
Jones, Alfred Stowell
Sewage
------------------------+----------------+----------------+-----------------+
_N.B._—The average duration of the above experiments was 14 months,
and average loss of capacity about 70 per cent. original water
capacity in that period.—A. S. J.
[Sidenote: Wrexham sewage farm.]
At Wrexham, in North Wales, I had nineteen years’ management of about
150 acres of good land, with a mixed residential and manufacturing
sewage of some 15,000 population, with large breweries and leather
works. The owner of this land at the termination of lease asked so
exorbitant a price for the improved freehold, that the corporation
decided to sacrifice the sewage works on his land, and to carry out a
scheme of mine for carrying the outfall sewer two miles further to a
site of 200 acres, which they could acquire on reasonable terms in the
year 1889.
During my management there was no trouble about the effluent, although
it was carefully watched by the authorities of the city of Chester,
which takes its water supply from the river Dee, some twelve miles
below my late farm; and the fact that the scheme which took the
Wrexham sewage two miles nearer to the Chester waterworks intake was
carried out _unopposed_ is, I think, strong evidence of well-founded
confidence in the efficiency of land treatment where the public have
the opportunity of observing such results. It is easy to get up a case
with expert evidence against any sewage scheme where the land-owners,
clergy and others have no means of properly informing themselves, and
have a prejudice against sewage which it is very difficult to overcome
except by giving the utmost possible publicity to the truth.
[Sidenote: The Camp Farm, Aldershot.]
Of late years, while working for the War Department, I have found it
expedient to be more reticent, but the Camp Farm restoration has in
one way or another become known to the public, and there can be no
great harm in my now referring to the circumstances as neither martial
law nor a censorship has yet been proclaimed in Hampshire.
When Aldershot Camp was first hutted, soon after the Crimean War, a
certain Colonel Ewart, R.E., had imbibed true ideas of the separate
system through his association with the work of the late Mr. Menzies,
the Deputy Ranger of Windsor Forest, who preached and practised that
system in the drainage of Windsor Castle and the town of Eton at a
time when every other civil engineer scouted the possibility of
keeping rain or subsoil water out of foul sewers—they said it was
essential for flushing their big sewers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account