894 



PARKS 



officials should use every effort to have public outdoor 

 bathing places located only at points where the clean- 

 ness and hygienic quality of the bathing waters will 

 conform to these standards." 



The following specifications have been set up by 

 various authorities to govern the purity of water: 



I. Standard adopted by the United States Treasury 

 Department for drinking and culinary water. This 

 standard was approved by the Fourth Annual Confer- 

 ence of State Sanitary Engineers in 1923, and is used as 

 a basis of the regulations governing swimming pool 

 sanitation in several states. (Reprint No. 1029 from the 

 Public Health Reports, page 4.) 



"(i) Of all the standard (10 c.c.) portions examined 

 in accordance with the procedure specified below (*), 

 not more than 10 per cent shall show the presence of 

 organisms of the B. coli group. 



(2) Occasionally three or .more of the five equal 

 (10 c.c.) portions constituting a single standard sample 

 may show the presence of B. coli. This shall not be 

 allowable if it occurs in more than 



(a) Five per cent of the standard samples when 

 twenty or more samples have been examined. 



(b) One standard sample when less than twenty 

 samples have been examined." 



* The procedure referred to is the standard method 

 adopted by the American Public Health Association. 

 (See "Standard Methods for the Examination of Water 

 and Sewage," Sixth Edition, A.P.H.A. Laboratory 

 Section.) 



2. Section 519 of the Municipal Code of Cleveland 

 requires the following degree of purity in the bathing 

 pools in the city: 



"(l) Every bathing pool shall be emptied and thor- 

 oughly cleaned at least once in every seven days, and 

 in addition thereto shall be completely emptied and 



thoroughly cleaned whenever the number of intestinal 

 bacteria in a cubic centimeter of the water shall exceed 

 ten as determined by standard tests of the division of 

 health." 



(The Division of Health interprets this section to 

 mean that a total bacterial count of not to exceed one 

 thousand bacterial groups per cubic centimeter, with 

 an absence of colon group pollution, indicates satis- 

 factory operation of bathing pools.) 



With the above standards as a basis, we recommend 

 that the following standard be considered the degree of 

 purity which should be maintained in streams in the 

 county which are to be used for bathing purposes: The 

 total bacterial count should not be allowed to exceed 

 one thousand bacterial groups per cubic centimeter. 

 Not more than two out of ten samples containing ten 

 cubic centimeters of water each should be allowed to 

 show organisms of the B. coli group, when tested accord- 

 ing to the standard method of the American Public 

 Health Association. 



It will be noted that this standard is a little lower 

 than that set up by the City of Cleveland for its out- 

 door pools. In our opinion, if streams are to be used 

 for bathing, coherent sewage disposal plans for the 

 whole county must be formulated, to the end that the 

 water in the streams will conform to the above standard. 

 In some cases it will be found feasible to deposit the 

 effluent from a disposal plant, sufficiently purified to 

 avoid a nuisance, below the swimming pools. In other 

 streams, plants which will make the effluent completely 

 innocuous will be necessary. In any event, if the water 

 in a pool falls below the suggested standard, arrange- 

 ments should be made to so disinfect the inflow to the 

 pool that it is brought up to the standard. 



We believe that the establishment of any standard 

 less than the above would be injurious to the health of 

 the community. 



During the course of their study of the Cleveland Metropolitan Park 

 situation the committee on public health of the chamber of commerce col- 

 lected information concerning the subject of the control of stream pollution 

 in parks and reservations from other cities throughout the United States. 

 The following are extracts from some of the replies received from other 

 cities: 



i. Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. Communica- 

 tion from the Sanitary District Commission: 



"The sanitary district of Chicago is a municipal 

 corporation organized under the laws of Illinois by act 

 of the Legislature and the amendments thereto, for the 

 purpose of disposing of the sewage from Chicago and 

 the surrounding cities. The district at present covers 

 some 443 square miles and includes 50 cities and vil- 

 lages. The population of this area is over 3,300,000. 

 The act gives us the power to build sewage treatment 



works and intercepting sewers for the purpose of treat- 

 ing the sewage and thereby keeping the streams clean. 

 In accordance with these powers, we have built and are 

 operating five sewage treatment works at the present 

 time, and have under construction what will be the 

 largest sewage treatment works of its type in the world 

 known as the North Side Sewage Treatment Works, 

 to handle 800,000 people. 



Our territory overlaps a large proportion of the hold- 

 ings of the forest preserves of Cook County. In con- 



