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24
WATER SUPPLY.
Month by month the water supply of the Parish has been
examined. In the early part of the year there were
evidences of some local contamination of certain water
supplies, and a correspondence took place between your
officer and the Company.
There is no evidence of contamination either of the
Grand Junction or of the West Middlesex supply in the chief
mains, but contamination of water does, as a fact, from time
to time occur locally. The chief sources of such contamination
are; the dead ends of mains; defects in service pipes and
in-suction of foul matter from the soil or from leaky drains;
foul cisterns.
The method by which the Grand Junction Officers take
a sample is to let so large a volume of water flow out of the
pipe, previous to filling the bottle, that an ordinary consumer,
if he followed the same practice, would be liable to be
summoned for waste of water.
The sample thus obtained represents fairly the
composition of water in that particular main, but it does not
represent the quality of the water that the consumer drinks.
The consumer rarely lets water run from the tap more than
a second or two before filling any receptacle. A Sanitary
Authority is quite as much interested in the purity of the
water actually consumed, than in what condition it may be
in the mains.
The writer believes that the duty of Water Companies
is not only to filter efficiently the water and to keep the main
service pure, but the Special Acts under which they possess
large powers also places upon them various responsibilities
far beyond the purity of the water in the mains, and makes
them responsible for defective service pipes and defective
fittings generally, affecting even locally the water supply.
PRACTICAL SANITARY WORK, 1899.
At page 33 will be found a summary of the work
carried out by the Sanitary Inspectors.
Complaints of insanitary condition varied in the previous
years from 1,129 to 1,198. During 1899 complaints
amounted to 1,158. The number of inspections of all