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40
from a broader standpoint than that of local wants. So far back as
the year 1886, the question of the pollution of the Lea occupied the
attention of a Select Committee of the House of Commons. From
the evidence then laid before the Committee it appeared that the
river was subject to pollutions from sewage and sewage effluents
from most of the districts adjoining. Briefly, it was found that from
some places crude sewage, from others sewage effluents after precipitation
of the solids, and from others again the effluents after
precipitation and land filtration, were passed into the river. In other
instances sewage was turned on to land from which no effluent
appeared, the water, &c., disappearing in the under-lying strata,
possibly gaining the river at a lower point or the waters stored up in
the chalk, from which we derive our drinking water.
Those witnesses examined, who were competent to express an
opinion, were unanimous in the view that whether the river were
used as a source for our domestic supply or only for recreation purposes,
it should be freed from all sewage whatever the treatment it
was previously submitted to, and the view was expressed that whatever
the treatment, whether by land or chemical or any combination,
it " was unsatisfactory which left an effluent to come into the river,"
and that there was a considerable danger attaching to those effluents
which were allowed to disappear in the underlying strata, especially
in the chalk. So much did this evidence influence the Committee
that in presenting their report they stated :
" Without desiring to prejudge the fuller consideration of
the question of the purification of the Biver Lea as a whole,
your Committee desire to point to the mode in which the sewage
which formerly polluted the Biver Thames in its passa ge through
London was dealt with by the Metropolitan Board of Works,
as affording a precedent which ought to be considered in connection
with the Biver Lea, and which, if followed, might be
expected to remedy the more flagrant evils complained of, at the
earliest practicable date."