Mr. Perkins. But the reason for the consideration of the pollution is the health of the people on both sides of the river. If the health of the people on both sides of the river can be taken care of, and it is only for drinking purposes, and you are producing an effluent of 200,000,000 gallons that has been treated and used for drinking purposes by either side, it is dangerous, ultimately, because with the growth of this city to a million people, we will include the whole Niagara frontier as one city. It means taking care of the Canadian side, too, but what cities are there on the other side that are being injured?
Mr. Gardner. I am not familiar enough with it to say.
Mr. Perkins. There is not a town outside of Bridgeburg that is utilizing water from the Niagara River. There is only Fort Erie and Bridgeburg, and they have the purest water to take it from. They have the Niagara River, which runs at the rate of 6 or 7 miles an hour. They can get the purest water—and the finest of fish live there—if they take it from the upper intake. I believe the whole question is one that is very easily solved by economical means for the benefit of the people on both sides, at one-hundredth of the expense of the tremendous sewage disposal plant, which in itself will be unsatisfactory. You can not take the sludge and compress it within the city limits and dry it and sell it as fertilizer and not produce a worse sanitary condition than you have now. Then, the drainage canal from here across to Lake Ontario would be a slow-moving stream, as proposed by the Lake Ontario power canal sanitary proposition. That would cost $25,000,000, and would not be a solution of the difficulty, because it would be an open sewer, and would be in a worse condition than at present, because it would be a sluggish stream. There is no question but that this matter should be considered carefully.
Mr. Gardner. I agree with you fully in that last statement.
Mr. Tawney. Do you say there is no pollution of these waters on the Canadian side by reason of dumping of raw sewage on this side of the Niagara River?
Mr. Perkins. I say there is no place where they are using it for drinking purposes, and there is 60 times as much water passing through the Niagara River as at the Chicago Drainage Canal. That would not in any way interfere with the health of the people on the Canadian side; so that I do not think the Canadian side is interested as much as the American side.
Mr. Tawney. The hearing at Niagara Falls a year ago last September showed conclusively that the waters on that side are polluted from the intake or from sewage dumped into the river from this side.
Mr. Perkins. Some of it gets across.
Mr. Tawney. Are they using that water for drinking purposes there?
Mr. Perkins. Yes.