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will probably be completed; the Company will then
bo able to give a better supply to the higher part of
their district throughout.
The five filters at Lea bridge, known as the Middlesex
filters, which were the first constructed by the Company,
and which have been in use over twenty-five
years, are being reconstructed.
Colonel Bolton, the water examiner under the
Metropolis Water Act, remarks, in one of his monthly
reports:—
"14.—The following clause of the Board of Trade Regulations, 1872,
rel.ative to waste-pipes, if carried out in its integrity, will prevent contamination
of the water from the gases generated by sewage, which are
extremely liable to flow back into the cisterns and become absorbed by
the water, unless the overflow-pipe is brought outside the house and the
end left exposed to the air, instead of being carried into the drain.
"Regulation 14.—No overflow or waste pipe other than a 'warningpipe'
shall be attached to any cistern supplied with water by
the Company, and every such overflow or waste pipe existing at
the time when these Regulations come into operation shall be
removed, or, at the option of the consumer, shall be converted
into an efficient 'warning-pipe,' within two calendar months
next after the Company shall have given to the occupier of, or
left at the premises in which such cistern is situate, a notice in
writing requiring such alteration to be made."
"The particular object of the above is to prevent the waste of water,
but if the overflow-pipe is brought outside the house and the end left
exposed to the air, instead of being carried into the drain, as is often the
case, it will effect an object of far greater importance by getting rid of
the poisonous effluvia and gases from the drains which would otherwise
ascend through the pipe, and not only be partly absorbed by the water in
the cistern, but be partly mixed with the air in the houses, thereby
becoming a cause of fever and disease.
"15.—The exercise of Government supervision tends materially to the
effectual filtration and delivery of good water by the Companies to their
respective districts, but from many causes the supply frequently deteriorates
after having been delivered by the Companies into the cisterns of