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156
consists of 66 members appointed by the County Councils of London,
Essex, Herts, Kent, Middlesex and Surrey, and by the Borough
Councils and Urban District Councils within the 563 square miles of
the statutory area of the Board. The Board were empowered to raise
money to compensate the eight companies to be taken over, and were
required to promote an act for equalising the charges made by the late
companies. The undertakings were transferred to the Board on the
24th June, 1904, and the cost of the transfer in accordance with the
decision of the Arbitration Court was £46,939,257, The stamp duty
on vesting of the undertakings was perhaps the largest paid and
amounted to £"214,707.
In accordance with the provisions of the Act of 1902, the Board in
1907 obtained an Act for making uniform charges. The effect of the
Act was that 91,684 consumers obtained a reduction of their rates
amounting to .£21,712. Since the Board have been in office they have
completed a service covered reservoir for filtered water at Honor Oak
of over 14 acres, capable of holding upwards of 56 million gallons. In
1913 the Board constructed a reservoir at Chingford which was
inaugurated by the King and named the " King George Reservoir,"
which covers 425 acres, and is capable of holding upwards of 3,073
million gallons. Only last June the King and Queen opened a new
reservoir at Littleton near Staines called the " Queen Mary Reservoir,"
which covers 723 acres and has a capacity of 6,750 million gallons, the
largest reservoir of its kind ever constructed. A walk round it would
cover four miles. The cost was approximately £"2,000,000. The
quantity of water supplied last year was 92,892 million gallons or a
daily average of 254.5 million gallons. The population supplied is
estimated at over 7,000,000 persons, of which 64 per cent. reside norch
of the Thames and 36 per cent. south. The population supplied is
equal to that of the Commonwealth of Australia or of Greece or
Holland. The average supply per head was last summer over 40
gallons per day. Thus in one way or another every Londoner consumes
or uses in a day more than twice his weight of water.
It is very difficult to appreciate the magnitude of the quantities
quoted, but some idea may be gained by way of comparison. If
St. Paul's Churchyard was made into a tank and filled with water to a
depth of 20 inches you would only have half-a-million gallons. Again,
if Trafalgar Square were made into a tank and filled to the height of