Field.— Water Pollution 181 



Looked at in a very large way, what are we doing all over 

 the United States ? We are collecting water which formerly 

 spread over and irrigated the ground and conducting it 

 in closed pipes down to the cities. I am speaking more 

 particularly of eastern cities. Thus in Boston and New 

 York inconceivable quantities of water are diverted from 

 the natural use and brought prematurely, so to speak, to the 

 ocean, without doing the work which was its original and 

 natural function. 



In addition to that we are diverting this material which 

 should go back to the land as a fertilizer, and which as 

 sewage variously mixed and modified is in Germany, at 

 Berlin, and other places, used for irrigating and fertilizing 

 the land. This land is rented to the farmers for $30 or $40 

 an acre, or practically the same price which farmers pay 

 here for water privileges on irrigated land. That fertiliz- 

 ing and irrigating material is turned into the ocean prema- 

 turely can mean nothing eventually except a vast destructive 

 economic waste. 



I do not believe we are in position immediately to over- 

 turn all our systems and ideas of sewage disposal; but the 

 time is coming when we must use this material on the land 

 for irrigating and fertilizing purposes, and we must use and 

 maintain the waters in a condition suitable for the develop- 

 ment of the fisheries. 



We had in Massachusetts the salmon fisheries, shad fish- 

 eries, alewife fisheries and smelt fisheries of a value of up- 

 wards of half a million dollars annually, which are abso- 

 lutely destroyed by this indecent method of sewage disposal. 



