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30
last annual report, has not been overcome. The Council requested
the East Surrey Water Company to extend their mains
to supply the houses, but the Company declined to accept a
reasonable offer made by the Council for part payment of the
cost of extension, and insisted on their own terms, which were
exorbitant.
The dangers alleged to threaten water supplies derived from
the Chalk are frequently heard of at the present time, and it is
understood that the County Medical Officer is making enquiry
into the question. The Croydon Corporation, who derive their
main supply from a well situated in the centre of that town,
complained to this Council at the end of 1895 that the
purity of their water was endangered by the existence of cesspool
drainage in this District on the outskirts of the town.
A report was presented in December in which I pointed out
that the cesspools in question were between two and three miles
distant from the Croydon well, and that, although it is alleged
that disease producing matter can travel even such distances
along the channels in the chalk, yet the immediate surroundings
of this well seemed to involve more likely dangers than the
cesspool drainage of which complaint was made.
At Kenley, however, one of the places alluded to as drained
in this manner, and which is a growing place, at present populated
with some 1,300 persons, there are four wells of great importance
belonging to the East Surrey Water Company, situated within a
quarter of a mile of a considerable proportion of this population.
I indicated that the cesspool drainage in the neighbourhood of
the wells must be regarded as a danger to their purity, even if
the dangers alleged to exist in consequence of the channels in the
Chalk are fanciful. In other words, the danger to this extent
would be there irrespective of the character of the soil (clay
excepted), unless the cesspools in their vicinity were completely
watertight.