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32
The overflow from one. of the main sewers in the same
locality into a tributary of the River Wandle, referred to in the
last report, has been disused during the year, and it is to be
hoped that the Council will not permit its use again.
The Council have continued to erect ventilating shafts in
place of road manhole ventilators where these have been the
cause of much nuisance, and care is being taken that they are
of substantial construction and well elevated above the roofs of
dwellings.
The Council, like other local authorities, have frequently
had to consider that class of house drains known generally as
"combined drains," which, since they drain more than one house,
have been held to be "sewers," and whenever there has been any
question of this kind, the Council have done the work themselves.
As much as £516 was spent by the Council during the latter
half of the year in making satisfactory this class of house drains.
The above remarks refer generally to that part of the
District known as the Drainage District, which includes Mitcham
Merton, Morden, Beddington, and Wallington. In the remaining
parishes of Addington, Sanderstead, Woodmansterne, and Coulsdon,
no general change has taken place. In these more rural
parishes cesspool drainage is universal, except at Parley and
Badger's Hole, Addington, and since no bye-laws exist in these
parishes, the cesspools are with few exceptions mere excavations
in the ground.
The drainage of Kenley has been already referred to under
water supply (page 30). The Croydon Corporation, when drawing
attention to the alleged danger to their water supply, offered,
on, I understand, favourable terms, to connect a sewerage system
for Kenley with their system near Purley. This offer applied
also to a portion of Sanderstead adjoining the town, where
building operations are active, and the drainage of which it is
thought desirable to assimilate to that of the borough. At