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Report of the Medical Officer of Health. 139
(4.) Special inspections were made on several occasions of the
River Wandle, and some gaugings were taken for the purpose
of ascertaining the normal discharge of the river. These
gaugings were taken as a Bill had been introduced into Parliament
to prohibit the Croydon Corporation from extracting
more water from the Wandle at its source.
The River Wandle enters this Borough at Summerstown,
and for over half-a-mile forms the boundary between it and
Wimbledon.
For the one-and-a-half miles to the River Thames it is
wholly in this Borough. On several occasions during the last 15
years I have called the attention of the Council to its polluted
condition, and to the foul deposits which accumulate in the
bed of the river in its whole course in the Borough.
This deposit is, in my opinion, increasing, owing very
largely to two causes : 1st, the greater amount of sewage
which is discharged from the four outfalls, viz. :—those of
Croydon Corporation, Carshalton District Council, Croydon
Rural Council, and Wimbledon Corporation, this sewage containing
a considerable amount of suspended matter; and 2nd,
to a diminution of water in the river, this being caused by the
lessened amount of water finding its way into the river from
its natural gathering grounds owing to the great increase in
the number of houses in Tooting and Wandsworth.
There has also been a diminution in the amount of water
from the River Graveney owing to the same cause.
Roughly speaking, one sixth of the whole volume of the
river water from Wickens-Pease's works consists of water
from sewage farms, and I am decidedly of opinion that any
further abstraction of water from the Wandle at its source
would cause an increase in the amount of solid matter and
therefore greater pollution.
On the 2nd July I gauged the flow of the river at Penwith
Road bridge, and I calculated that at the time the