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14
The Council has on several occasions requested that the County
Council should make by.laws in accordance with the provisions
of Section 26 of the Housing and Town Planning Act, 1919, whereby
the Council could secure more sanitary conditions as regards houses
let in lodgings, and the Council has also pressed for powers to deal
with disused drains, to prevent the institution of workshops and
factories under unsuitable conditions, and to prevent the spread
of infectious disease in insanitary offices and workshops.
The Council has requested the Ministry of Health to grant additional
powers for preventing ill.health through the adulteration and
chemical contamination of food such as the undue use of boric acid
and the use of copper salts or preservatives containing arsenic or lead.
The Ministry of Health has also been informed that there is considerable
evidence that particles of glass were sometimes present in jam
sold in glass containers. All these matters are now receiving the
attention of the Ministry.
The River Lea remains in as offensive a condition as usual, and
is the subject of the usual complaints.
In February, 1923, the Council protested against yet another
local authority—St. Albans Rural District—being permitted to discharge
sewage effluent into the River, and received a reply from the
Ministry of Health stating that "the proposed works will result in
less, not more, pollution of the River Lea."
The Ministry, however, considers that Leyton and Walthamstow
sewage would be better discharged into a London County Council
sewer than into the Lea, but the Borough Engineer and Surveyor
and Sanitary Engineering Specialists consulted by the Council have
stated that the scheme for dealing with Walthamstow and Leyton
sewage will result in storm times in sewage flooding into houses in
the Hackney Wick area, and in addition to this to further contamination
of the Lea by London sewage released by storm overflows that
it is proposed to construct under the scheme.