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OFFENSIVE CARGO BYE LAWS.
New Bye laws for the carriage of refuse by lighters from loading points
in the River to refuse tips down River came into force on 1st November, 1948.
The object of the bye laws is to improve the conditions under which refuse is
transported down the River and it has been considered necessary to require
that craft conveying such refuse shall be so constructed and maintained as to
avoid all reasonable possibility of the refuse causing a nuisance either by
overloading of the craft or by exposure to the elements and, incidentally, to
depredations by seagulls and by fly development.
Many of the loading tips on the River front are far from satisfactory
and are the cause of many complaints of smell, dust and other undesirable
features associated with what can only be regarded as a most inefficient
method of loading refuse into the barges.
The principal difficulty that has to be surmounted is due to the
tidal rise and fall of the Thames so that lighters may at one moment be
only a few feet below the loading tip and at another sixteen feet or more
be low a It, seems clear that the only my of overcoming this difficulty
is by constructing loading basins which maintain a constant level of water.
The loading basin of the Metropolitan Borough of Westminster at Grosvenor
Dock is a striking example of how satisfactorily this can be done.
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