SEWAGE TREATMENT.
By LIEUT.-COL. ALFRED S. JONES, V.C.
Assoc. M. Inst. C.E., etc.
Introductory remarks.
"How extremely simple it all is!” was the remark of a recent visitor at a sewage farm—which encourages me to venture on publication of the most recent discussions on a “problem” complicated by engineers, chemists, bacteriologists and inventors of systems, who have raised clouds of dust through which it is difficult for ratepayers and district councillors to find their way to “the best practical and available means of sewage disposal.”
I have a belief that publication of all attempts to purify the whole of a town’s sewage, rather than small scale experiments with equations founded on such data, is the desideratum.
1872.
Having begun in the year 1872, with a pamphlet, “Will a Sewage Farm Pay?”[2] I desire to proceed with the present one thirty years later, as my humble contribution to a right understanding of the intelligent Scavenger’s business.
At the earlier date agriculture was prosperous, and ratepayers of Exeter were just as confident that sewage farming would bring large dividends as some of the same
city’s councillors are at present not in the least sceptical that their engineer’s septic system is the true specific for sewage disposal.
In adhering to land as the natural and best agent, I have had the support of the Local Government Board with that of many Royal Commissions, notably the one now sitting, and I have naturally chosen cases where suitable land was accessible when I desired to demonstrate the efficiency and simplicity with which the powers of Nature can be applied for the use and convenience of man.