362 _ PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECTIONS. 
Sanitation of the Suburbs of Sydney. 
By J. Trevor Jones, C.E. 
[Read before the Sanitary Section of the Royal Society of N.S.W., 
16 November, 1886.] 
THE question of the sanitation of the suburbs has at various times 
agitated the residents thereof, so far as to lead to the calling 
together of meetings, having for their object the initiation of steps 
to secure the benefit of some system whereby the refuse of modern 
housekeeping and foecal products might be disposed of in some 
better way than is done at present. 
The city of Sydney set early in its history about securing 
accommodation of this character by taking advantage of the steep 
declivity of the surface to discharge the combined product of 
house-refuse and storm-water into the harbour, and more recently 
has undertaken to intercept the bulk of it by a main trunk col- 
lector sewer, so designed as to discharge its contents into the open 
ocean ; and is also actively carrying out a water-carriage system 
for the southern slopes to convey the sewage of those localities to 
the neighbourhood of Botany Bay, where it is proposed to establish 
a sewage farm for its utilization. 
The adoption of a scheme for the suburbs has been retarded by 
many considerations, comprising, among others, the contentions of 
communities, and all more or less contending against the popular 
water-carriage system on account of its wastefulness of a valuable 
fertilizer, and its property of generating and disseminating gases 
of a character deleterious to the health. 
The systems advocated by disentients from the water-carriage 
system have each their respective claims on adoption, and their 
schemes are the outcome of the labours of thoughtful public-minded 
men, and their allegations as to the objections to the water-carriage 
system are based upon fact—that is to say, sewa ing in 
Sewers does give off deleterious gases, and which, if not excluded 
from the dwelling, renders the breathing-air unwholesome. 
It is, however, unnecessary to enter into lengthy details as to 
thes: J}; ] ly 1 ohbiecti tos inasmuch as, in the opinion 
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