Refuse Disposal and Sewage Purification. 29 



believed that if an expenditure of ^^4, 500 a year would purify 

 the sewage of Belfast it would not be necessary to call on the 

 liberaHty of the Council at all — they would vote that sum with 

 the greatest ol pleasure in two minutes. And when the proper 

 time came he believed the Council would not hesitate about 

 voting four or five or six times the amount mentioned for the 

 purpose referred to. 



Professor Fitzgerald said he had Hstened to the paper with 

 great satisfaction, and admired the practical way in which Mr. 

 Chambers had attacked his subject, and treated it in general. 

 He (the Professor) took it they did not want particularly any 

 wonderful plan, with elaborate chemicals, much machinery, and 

 so-forth, which was to produce an affluent that could be put 

 into a small stream, the size, for instance, of the Dodder, near 

 Dublin. What they wanted was a simple precipitation plan, 

 which would render the sewage matter sufficiently innocuous to 

 be put safely into the lough, and unlikely to lead to the 

 accummulation of sludge banks, which seemed to be certainly 

 going on now in a way very much analogous to what began to 

 be noticeable in the Thames about the year 1872, and the 

 result of which was that the London sewage had to be precipi- 

 tated, and the sludge taken out to sea as it was now. With 

 regard to the use of the destructor, and the advantage of 

 utilising the heat, he thought the destructor which Mr. 

 Chambers had shown them was an extremely well-designed 

 one, but in spite of Edinburgh, he had not been converted to 

 the belief that there was really anything to be got out of the 

 utilisation of the heat in the way of raising steam. 



Dr. St. George (Lisburn) favourably criticised the paper. 

 He said that in Lisburn they laboured under difficulties some- 

 what similar to those in Belfast with reference to the disposal 

 of sewage. They discharged the sewage into the River Lagan 

 — but they did not want to make it a gigantic cesspool any 

 longer, and they had now a Bill before Parliament to get their 

 sewerage system into a better state. 



Alderman James Dempsey spoke of the absolute necessity of 



