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61
river water safe to use. In fact, if the statements of the Water
Committee are to be accepted, even this matter of expense by
no means weighs in favour of the old supply. The report goes
so far as to state that while the expense of providing London
with an extra 240 million gallons of water a day from present
sources would amount to upwards of £100,000 per million
gallons, the expense of fetching 182 million gallons per day from
Wales would be but £96,000 per million gallons, while to bring
415 million gallons would in proportion cost less still.
The patent fact and the standing menace to the safety of
London is this, that the Thames and the Lea drain populous,
highly cultivated, and therefore highly polluted areas. There
was in 1891 a population of 1,056,415 persons living on the land
which drains into the Thames above the various intakes of the
water companies at or near Molesey, and this population is
rapidly increasing. On the same area there were also probably
about 1,600,000 animals. No doubt the art of filtering water
has been, theoretically at any rate, brought to a pitch of very
considerable perfection. But it certainly sometimes fails, and it
is clear that so long as we drink water derived from a thickly
populated area over which the use of waterclosets is rapidly
extending, so long must we remain absolutely dependent on the
unintermitting efficiency of processes of sedimentation and filtration
for our protection from the evils of drinking sewage. Let
us compare with these tainted sources the gathering ground
offered by the County Council's Water Committee. "The areas
from which the water would be derived are composed of the impermeable
beds of the primary rocks of the old red sandstone
and silurian systems, which are noted for the purity of the water
which flows from their slopes. Owing to the general altitude
of these districts on the steep slopes of the surrounding hills
arable cultivation is almost impossible, the lower portions being
chiefly composed of mountain pastures running up into bare unculturable
wastes, with but a sparse population in any part."
As we understand the suggested plans, the land from which the