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Public Cleansing.
(a) Streets. Difficulties continue in relation to the engagement of adequate
labour for street orderly work, and conditions continue much the same as in
the past year.
(b) Refuse Collection. The new Dennis "Paxit" vehicles are now fully
in operation and arrangements are proving satisfactory and much more hygienic
than the previous methods of collection. Salvage and refuse are collected weekly,
apart from special requirements, and the sale of salvage materials has continued
to give a profitable return to the rate-payers. As an experiment, four pedestrianoperated
electrically-propelled vehicles for collecting pig food have been
purchased, and an issue of approximately 4,000 household collecting bins or
buckets have been made in an area of approximately quarter of the Borough.
These household bins or buckets, are provided with lids, are attractive in design
and easy to handle, and householders are requested to place their kitchen waste
in the bin and to bring it to their front entrances twice weekly. The kitchen
waste is then collected in the electrically-operated vehicle, so that there is no
need for pig food bins of the type previously supplied and sited in the highway.
Active co-operation from the public has resulted in as much kitchen waste being
collected from a quarter of the Borough by the new method as by street bins
in three-quarters of the Borough in the past, and the new system is felt to be
more hygienic and in all ways more desirable. Consideration will, in due course,
be given to the extension of this system to the whole of the Borough.
(c) Refuse Disposal. The present disposal of refuse is by controlled
tipping on various low-lying sites. The destructors at Teddington and
Twickenham have not been in use. Permission to proceed with the Charlton
Plant is eagerly awaited, as it is felt that the completion of this scheme will
solve many of the difficulties which are likely to arise in the Twickenham area
in the near future, when low lying land for tipping purposes will no longer be
available.
WATER SUPPLY
I am indebted to Lt.-Col. E. F. W. Mackenzie, Director of Water Examination,
Metropolitan Water Board, for the following report:—
The water supply to the Twickenham area is abstracted from the River
Thames at Wraysbury, Laleham and Walton, purified in the storage reservoirs
at Staines, Littleton and Walton and at the filtration works at Hampton.
After filtration the water receives a small dose of chlorine and adequate
contact is provided to ensure complete action of the chlorine before the water
is pumped into supply. It is therefore possible to provide a water of consistently
high bacterial quality and yet having none or so little chlorine remaining
in the water in the distribution system that there is no likelihood of chlorinous
tastes being detected by consumers.
Samples of water are collected at all stages of purification at least five
times each week and are analysed by experts at the laboratories of the
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