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57
The Growth of Riverside Population.
The similarity of the estimates, made by the Royal Commission
and the County Council, as to the future rate of growth
of London, makes it probable that the result arrived at is fairly
correct, namely, that in 1931 a population of about eleven and
a quarter millions of persons will have to be provided for.
There is no reason, however, to believe that this great multitude
will be evenly spread over the area under consideration, and if
the growth of London should largely extend up river, if with
improved railway facilities the population of the Thames basin
should increase at the rate at which some of the riverside urban
districts have lately done, it may easily happen that the water
of the river may become unmanageably foul even before it fails
in quantity. Mr. Cripps, however, points out that, taking the
estimate of the Commission, our respite even as regards
quantity is really not for forty years. Three years have already
gone by, and considering the length of time which would be
necessary for working out and executing any scheme for fetching
water from a new source of supply, he thinks that it would be
impossible for the governing authority of London to defer the
selection of some such new source more than fifteen or twenty
years.
The Quality of Present Sources of Supply.
Mr. Shirley Murphy, Medical Officer to the London County
Council, confines his observations to that portion of the report
of the Royal Commission which relates to the quality of the
present sources of supply. The Royal Commission had before
it evidence, he says, which showed that the rivers from which
the Water Companies draw their supplies receive from the
towns situated on their banks at varying distances above the
intakes sewage effluents, which, after treatment of the sewage,
either by filtration through land or by chemical processes,
enter smaller rivers. In addition to these numerous pollutions
from smaller populations discharging into cesspools and ditches
reach, untreated, the streams at times of heavy rainfall. Such