But when the engineer has done his best, the sanitary authorities, having borrowed the funds to pay for the work, will take no further trouble about its sewage, and
will often engage careless ignorant workpeople at inadequate wages to carry on the hourly varying labour, on efficient performance of which success depends.
Automatic appliances for sewage and effluent discharge.
It may seem idle to complain of boards and their employees showing little interest in the work of sewage disposal, but it is worse to pander to their failings by selling them automatic machines under the pretence that all the thought, and fertility of resource, required for efficient sanitary sewage disposal can be supplied by ingenious applications of hydraulics on the principle that sewage is a fluid, and, as such, will behave like clean water.
Of course, when the aerobic treatment is carried out on a bare level surface of cinders or coke growing only weeds, the lack of interest is very excusable, but in the natural system the growth of crops and contouring a sloping surface with carriers so that every part shall have its trickling water alternating with dry periods for cutting the crops or hoeing out weeds, should be a matter of constant interest to an agricultural worker, and, if he knows his business, good crops and purity of effluent must go together.
Managers should have a free hand.
In order to attain this happy result, a manager must know his business and be given a free hand, not pestered by members of a committee (farmers, butchers, gardeners or town tradesmen) coming to give their advice or orders. The river authority should take samples as often as they like and send the manager as soon as possible the analyses with day and hour of sampling as a guide for future working.
He will then have to explain any defect from average purity of effluent, due to one of the hundred contingencies which may arise in practice, after he and the river authorities have agreed about what that average
analysis should be for his particular farm or works; and it will be for the advantage of all parties not to try and enforce a fixed standard for a whole district, as some river authorities usually attempt to do, because it is easier to lead than to drive a good manager, and nothing at all can be done with a bad one.
It must not be supposed that I think river authorities should be easy going, quite the contrary, but they should trust their inspectors’ reports, and “run in” those sanitary authorities who are careless about the management of their sewage farms and trying to cut down working expenses and capital.