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39
purification works are at Dartford. Sewerage is there
precipitated by gravitation before being discharged into
the River Thames. The surface water drainage of the
Borough is separate from the system for foul drainage.
There are 22 cesspools in the unsewered portion of the
Borough, otherwise there is water carriage. No bouses
have been erected during 1933 with cesspool drainage.
As this Report is concerned with the year 1933, the
subject of drainage and sewerage of the added areas will
come under review at the appropriate time.
Water.
A piped supply is general throughout the Borough,
and comes mainly from the Metropolitan Water Board's
deep chalk well at Shortlands Valley. The supply is
sufficient, very hard, but of high grade purity, and is
accepted as a standard of purity for deep well water.
For particulars of reservoirs within the district reference
may be made to page 35 of my Annual Report for 1930.
From perusal of a History of Bromley published in
1858 it is perhaps interesting to quote what is therein
written about the Town's water supply at that time:
" Springs flow in copious streams from the hillsides
during good part of the year, one in particular, about
half-a-mile south-west of the Church under the opposite
hill, deserves especial notice, from its apparently unabated
supply through the unusually dry summer of 1857; no
town at the same altitude can boast of a more plentiful
supply of good water." Probably this spring is the main
source of the supply to the Board's deep chalk well in
Shortlands Valley, and it is satisfactory to know, in these
times of threatened shortage, that one of the town's main
water supplies has apparently yielded an unabated flow
for so many years.
Scavenging.
There is no important extension or improvement
during 1933 to report of the methods of scavenging or
refuse disposal within the Borough.