View report page

36
DRAINAGE.
an escape to the gaseous contents of a sewer. Under
such circumstances, your Honourable Court has desired
that I should express my opinion, how far a
different course might be adopted in respect of these
exhalations; how far, namely, they might be neutralised
within the sewers; how far it might be
chemically feasible, and in a sanitary point of view
expedient, that a systematic use should be made of
de-odorising agents; so that any gas escaping from
the sewers should at least be divested of its original
smell.
On this subject, I would submit to you the following
considerations. As respects its feasibility
(putting aside as foreign to my province all questions
of the expense, and all details of the daily
arrangement) a first and obvious objection is this:
Granted, in the abstract, that sewer-gases can be
converted by appropriate agents into inodorous
compounds; in the practical application of these
agents, you would find impediments with which you
are already familiar. Theoretically, there may be
no difficulty in providing air-tight traps; practically,
there is said to be every difficulty: just as that
mechanical problem has defeated you in practice,
so would the chemical one; and for the same reason.
The fulfilment of either problem is a matter of nice
adjustment: in proportion as your gully-hole is exquisitely
trapped, it becomes liable to obstruction;
it loses its use as an inlet to the sewer, nearly in the
same measure as it becomes an effective obstacle to