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 243,624 acres 

 in extent. Only 16 local authorities, namely, Edinburgh, 

 Dundee, Paisley, Clydebank, Ayr, Dairy, Mid Lanarkshire, 



247 



