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119
Bill (Metropolitan Sewers and Drains) was brought in on
behalf of the Council in 1896, but it did not become law. A
similar Bill, it is hoped, will be introduced during the current
session of Parliament, the special object being to obtain an
amendment of the definition of the word "drain" in the Metropolis
Management Acts. Legislation is certainly necessary, seeing
that sanitary authorities are unwilling to carry out the provisions
of the law, by repairing, as "sewers," conduits which
they consider to be "combined drains" properly repairable at
the expense of the owners of the houses drained in common
thereby. Cases are not unknown in which a sanitary authority
have failed to abate nuisances, after the refusal of the owners
of houses to comply with notices requiring them to execute
work which, in the present unsatisfactory and even inequitable
state of the law, has been held by the highest legal authorities
to be the duty of the sanitary authority. Other authorities, however,
have expended great sums of money in the repair, as sewers,
of combined drains. With the view to facilitate inquiries as to
whether any system of combined drainage had been sanctioned
by the late Commissioners of Sewers, the predecessors of the
Vestries, &c., and so to settle, as far as practicable, whether any
such system constitutes a "sewer" repairable by the sanitary
anthority, or a "drain" repairable by the owners of the houses
drained thereby, the Sanitary Committee, upon my advice,
resolved, in July, to obtain an abstract of those portions of
the records of the Commissioners relating to this parish, and
this abstract has already proved of great service by saving the
labour of a search at Spring Gardens upon every occasion of
dispute; it will, moreover, well repay the cost of its preparation
by rightly throwing upon owners the responsibility for repairs,
&c., of combined drains which, without the information it affords,
would have devolved upon the sanitary authority the duty of
repairing such combined drains as a sewer.