CHAPTER XI 
WATER CATCHMENT AREAS IN SCOTLAND 
As no official publication on the water supplies of Scottish 
municipalities has yet appeared, the following account of 
the principal gathering grounds of Scotland will be of 
interest. This information is the result of queries addressed 
to the town clerks and burgh surveyors, and would have 
been more complete but for the stress of war time. 
Attention is again drawn to the fact already mentioned 
that so few of these gathering grounds are owned by 
the Corporations. ‘This is the more to be regretted, as 
in Scotland, owing to the proximity of these areas to 
industrial centres, their afforestation, an easy matter in 
many cases, if they were publicly owned, would be certain 
to prove remunerative. It will also be seen that the 
sanitary precautions taken on the areas that are privately 
owned are often insufficient to prevent contamination of 
the water supply. The compulsory public ownership of the 
gathering grounds in Scotland would then seem to be 
necessary, both for the purpose of enforcing adequate 
sanitary control of the water supply, and as a means 
of increasing the reserves of growing timber in_ the 
country. 
The 78 local authorities in Scotland, from whom 
reports have been received, obtain their water supply 
from gathering grounds which aggregate 245,624 acres 
in extent. Only 16 local authorities, namely, Edinburgh, 
Dundee, Paisley, Clydebank, Ayr, Dalry, Mid Lanarkshire, 
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