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221
No copies of certificates of registration were received from the
Minister during the year.
Water Supply
London's population has repeatedly created problems in the
maintenance of an adequate supply of water for domestic purposes.
Demands today are already onerous but, with a greater attention
being paid to personal and public hygiene, these are becoming
more clamant.
As a county London is unique in that it is practically wholly
developed. Over the years, buildings and drainage have disturbed
the natural flow of water and such resources as were available have
been rendered useless for the supply of pure water. Deficiences
in overground supplies within the county are met by tapping outside
sources and water from the higher reaches of the Thames and
the Lea together with the exploitation of the underground waterbearing
strata form the bulk of London's supplies. Indeed, for
some considerable time now, water from springs, streams and wells
has been dwindling and greater use has had to be made of the
Thames which now contributes more than two thirds of the total
of the Metropolitan Water Board's supplies.
Regrettably, rivers and their tributaries are themselves becoming
polluted and this modern necessity for "re-using" water for
domestic purposes is not without its hazards although, to date,
these have been successfully dealt with by the Board.
Today, synthetic detergents, pesticides and herbicides (the uses
of which are on the increase), trade wastes which are greater in
quantity and chemically more complex, waste products of nuclear
degeneration and even atmospheric pollution are all making their
contribution to residues being discharged into river water already
deficient in oxygen sufficiently fully to degrade the various existing
pollutants thereby rendering the future task of providing a pure
water supply even more difficult.
The whole of the Borough is supplied with water by the Metropolitan
Water Board, a Statutory undertaking, which, as a result of
the Metropolis Water Act, 1902, was formed in 1903 when it took
over the 8 undertakings which were then supplying London's water.
As a Board it is committed to supply a population of some
million people within an area of 540 square miles extending from
Ware in the north to Sevenoaks in the south and which has an
average daily consumption of about 400 million gallons. One of
this Borough's two wells which supply drinking water is a most
prolific contributor to the Board's supplies, having a normal output
of 5 million gallons per day.