1911] on Water Supply. 101 



than the question of the, future water supply of England. At one 

 time England was able with its rich fields to feed its own popula- 

 tions, but, as trade prospered and populations increased, it was found 

 impossible to produce food-stuffs sufficient for our people, and at 

 present probably five-sixths of the total food of the people is imported 

 from abroad. It is in this connection that current politics has taken in 

 hand the problem how we are to continue to obtain these supplies 

 from abroad ; and while one school of politics thinks that the future 

 is assured to us so long as the price of the loaf is not .increased, 

 another recognizes the necessity of earning sufficient here to enable 

 us to buy our food in other markets. But in relation to water supply 

 we are in a worse predicament. We must depend for that on the 

 rainfall of our own lands, and the improvident way in which our 

 sources have been squandered in the past, the way in which the long 

 arm of wealth has been allowed to appropriate sources which may 

 not naturally or geographically belong to the community in question, 

 the exhaustion of local sources, and the waste of underground water 

 which takes place in connection with the mining operations of 

 England, has much complicated the great question, and has made 

 the future of Britain as to water supply both precarious and serious. 



I have pointed out that the sources of supply are from springs, 

 streams, and wells which tap the underground sources. There are 

 in some quarters objections to rivers — full grown rivers — -as a source 

 of supply, largely due to the fact that communities with insanitary 

 rashness and short-sightedness have thrown their refuse and filth 

 into streams, and made them the carriers of sewage. This matter was 

 fully discussed recently in Parliament when the Great Yarmouth 

 Water Company endeavoured to secure an additional supply of water 

 to the town beyond that which it then drew from Ormesby Broad. 

 We know, of course, that the rainfall in the Eastern counties is much 

 less than in the West of England and Wales, and the company had 

 been advised by most competent engineers that the most suitable 

 source of supply was from the River Bure. The population above 

 the proposed intake was very small, only one person to four acres, 

 l)ut still it could not be said that no sewage did find its way into the 

 river. But even this insanitary indiscretion is condoned by Nature, 

 and rivers, especially rapid and turbulent streams, have a way of 

 burning off effete matter which is put into its liquid charge. Whether 

 this process of purification is absolutely effective or not is still a moot 

 point, and chemists and bacteriologists are divided as to the safety in 

 any case of drinking water which has been subject to sewage pollu- 

 tion. One gentleman holding that in a few miles a river will get rid 

 of all sewage by its "cold ablution" ; another that there is not a 

 river in England long enough to get rid of a pathogenic germ. The 

 great experiment of London has failed to convince some of these 

 experts. London derives the bulk of its water from the Thames. 

 Li the Thames watershed, above the Water Board's intake, there are 



