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10
Lee is used to capacity. It is one of the miracles of modern
water engineering that the M.W.B. water from the River
Lee is pure and wholesome, although a quarter of its daily
flow is treated sewage and industrial effluent from places
like Luton, Harpenden, Wheathampstead, Hatfield and
others. The real change will come when the M.W.B. can
make Thames water available when present works are completed.
A main of 102" diameter in a tunnel will lead ample
supplies of this water from Hampton to Walthamstow. This
work should soon be completed but enormous engineering
development will still be required to ensure this water is
adequately stored, filtered, sterilized and delivered. When
this is completed in 1968 at the earliest, and if satisfactory
arrangements are made between the M.W.B. and S.E.W.C.
(no doubt the Ministry will ensure they will be made) our
troubles will be over.
At least, say the S.E.W.C. , until 1981.
Who is to blame for all this? Obviously we cannot
blame the S.E.W.C. for the shortage of water sources in
Essex, but could they have foreseen this shortage and persuaded
the M.W. B. to provide adequate quantities of Thames
water years earlier. The S.E.W.C. seem very satisfied that
25 gallons of water per head per day is provided, locally
for domestic purposes. This amount has been satisfactory
in the past for the average Englishman* but in the sixties
when we have never before had it so good with better houses
and more baths, and vastly increased numbers of motor
cars that have to be washed, and industry expanding, could
it not have been foreseen that the individual demand would
rocket towards quantities that may seem excessive to the
S.E.W.C. but not to American water engineers? The
present negotiations of the S.E.W.C. and M.W.B. began in
1956, should they not have started in 1950? Perhaps also
the S.E.W.C. feel that they were not sufficiently consulted
about the export of population from London to Essex, if so,
did they make their difficulties sufficiently well known?
We can hardly blame the M.W.B. for not planning
sufficiently well aheadfor other supplying authorities. They
obviously manage their own area of supply efficiently.
Can we blame the local authorities? They are represented
on the M.W.B. with which organisation we have
no quarrel. The S.E.W.C. is a statutory water company and
thus has no local authority representation on its board, it