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140
WATER SUPPLY
Professor Frankland's Report.—It being desirable that
your Vestry, as Sanitary Authority, should be well informed on
the subject of water supply, one of great importance in relation to
public health, it has been my custom, for several years, to summarise
the reports prepared annually by Professor Frankland, for
the Registrar-General, and by Colonel Sir Francis Bolton, R.E.,
the official "Water Examiner," under the Metropolis Water
Act, 1871. Dr. Frankland, who is adverse to riparian sources
of supply, deals mainly with the quality of the water in its
chemical and microscopical aspects, and in regard to its fitness
for dietetic and domestic purposes; Sir Francis Bolton's observations
have reference to the condition of the water in bulk at the
intakes; to its physical qualities when delivered to the consumer;
and, in a word, to whatever concerns collection, subsidence,
filtration, storage and distribution.
London is supplied mainly from the rivers Thames and Lea, but a considerable
and increasing quantity of water is obtained from deep wells
sunk in the chalk, not only by the Companies which obtain their entire
supply from that source, but also by some of the old Companies which
thus supplement their intake of river water. The average daily volume
supplied per head of population in 1885 was 28.6 gallons.
Dr. Frankland is consistent in his preference for "deep well water," taking
it as the standard of purity in comparative observations on the supplies
by the several companies. In a previous report he described it as being
"delicious and wholesome" and uniformly excellent for dietetic purposes;
maintaining that in the interests of temperance and public heal th,
it should, as soon as possible, be substituted for that portion of the Metropolitan
supply which is drawn from polluted rivers. This "pure spring
water," he said, "is everywhere abundant in the Thames basin; in dry
seasons it constitutes the sole supply of the Thames and the Lea, and
even after the most protracted drought, more than 350,000,000 gallons
of it daily flow over the weir at Teddington, whilst a further very large
volume of it joins the Thames lower down." He considered that it
would be a valuable boon to London if even a small fraction of
this prodigal supply could be collected, preserved from irremediable
pollution and distributed to those portions of the Metropolis which
are not at present supplied with such water. The principal objection
to the water is its hardness, but this is an objection easily surmounted.