156 
TYPHOID FEVEK lET DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 
RED OAK SPRING COMPANY. 
? [Office, Eleventh and F streets NE.] 
This company bottles and sells for table use a water obtained from 
a spring about miles out on the Bladensburg road, District of 
Columbia. 
The spring appears at the base of a knoll which is under cultivation 
and on which is a house now untenanted and said to have been 
unoccupied for some months. About 150 feet away is a barn not m 
use at the tune of the inspection. Adjoining the barn was a box privy, 
but this has been moved some 300 feet below the spring and to the far 
side of a little brook which flows by. The natural drainage from the 
barn is toward the brook. The present location of the priw\^ removes 
it from all consideration in connection with the spring. Such drain- 
age from the slope as would tend toward the spring is diverted to 
either side b}^ a shallow furrow plowed across part of the slope above 
the spring. Careful provision has been made for the protection of 
the spring and the water. The spring itself has been surrounded m a 
radius of 8 feet bv a thick circular concrete wall extending, it is said, 
about 15 feet below the ground surface, and on it a substantial spring 
house has been erected. This is kept closed against mtruders. The 
floor of this spring house is vitrified brick laid m cement, and m the 
center is sunk a glazed terra-cotta cylinder about 3 feet in diameter, 
into which the spring wells up and from which the water is piped a 
distance of about 15 feet to a concrete basm serving as a reservoir 
and protected by a house similar to the spring house. The waste 
flows off into a catch basin, from which it runs through a pipe to the 
brook. The water is pumped from this reservoir into 5-gallon glass 
carboys and hauled to the office, where it is poured into glazed earthen- 
ware crocks m preparation for bottling. The bottling is done in a 
large airy room adjoinhig the office proper. Here the bottles and 
carboj^s are cleaned, first in tap water, then m hot spring water, and 
dramed. The bottles are then filled from the crocks, the water flow- 
ing out through a faucet into a fumiel covered with a cloth intended 
to act as a straining cloth. This cloth is washed from time to time. 
Half-gallon bottles are stoppered with a porcelain stopper having a 
rubber gasket, both of which are first washed in the spring water. 
The .5-gallon carboys, after being filled, are cork stoppered. 
A sample (No. 371) taken from the waste pipe at the spring was 
examined chemically and bacteriologically. Considering all the 
evidence, this water may properly be regarded as unpolluted. 
E. A. BUTTS. 
« 
[734 Fourteenth street NW.] 
This firm sells Geneva Ked Cross lithia and Hume Spring water, 
both of which are bottled on the premises. 
