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24
Sanitary Circumstances.
1871. There are statutory obligations laid upon the Board so as to
ensure the delivery of wholesome water, and also provisions against
pollution by consumers and others. The Controlling Authority is
the Local Government Board, which causes the water supply by
the companies to be examined periodically, approves or disapproves
of new sources of supply, and enquires into complaints made to it
as to the quality or quantity of the water supplied for domestic use.
A river wall has been constructed in order to prevent the
Thames overflowing its banks between the White Hart Hotel and
the Lonsdale Road, affecting chiefly the Terrace, Barnes. This is
a most important preventive measure for stopping the flooding of
basements of these houses and so indirectly preventing the increase
of rheumatism and tuberculosis.
Excerpts from the 7th Annual Report to the Metropolitan Water
Board, by Dr. A. C. Houston.
" Over seven years' work on the London water question has
convinced me that to a progressively increasing extent the Water
Board are securing the reasonable, if not absolute, ' safety ' of the
Metropolitan Water Supply. This opinion will carry the more
weight since I have been, and still remain, a somewhat merciless
critic of any imperfections in processes of water purification.
As a counsel of perfection, I still feel bound to advocate the
choice of an initially pure source of water supply ; but my own
results and experiments do seem to indicate clearly that the evil
effects even of an impure source can be largely, if not entirely,
annulled by adequate storage and efficient filtration.
It needs to be remembered, however, that the more water
that is abstracted from a river for waterworks purposes, the less
easy does it become to select water of good quality.
It is the more important to consider carefully these matters,
because still more critical periods will sometimes occur when the