The quality of the Perth water supply.

Date:
[1876]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The quality of the Perth water supply. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    through us, and not specially to the Water Commission:— 29th July, 1876. It may save the question being put to me, if I take the opportunity which you offer me of stating that Mr Bate- man’s Report affects my opinion of the ?msuitability, for drinking purposes, of the Perth river water—as at present supplied to the city—just as little as did Dr Macadam’s analysis. I repeat that the determination of the suita- bility or unsuitability of any given water for consumption by a given population—the probability or improbability of its giving rise to epidemic or other disease, or to 2:^redispo- sitions to disease—is a question with which only the physician—who has specially studied sanitary subjects—is competent to deal. No number of opinions of mere chemists or engineers can do away with the fact, that the Tay at Perth is virtually a river server, containing the excrements—fluid and solid—of 26,000 people, besides the drainage of over- full graveyards, and the refuse of dyewoiks and other public works: in addition to the sewage and refuse of all the towns and villages on higher parts of the river, or on its tributaries above Perth, Nor can any amount of mere chemical or engineering evidence neutralise the generalisa- tion—based on innumerable facts—by the Water-Supply Commissioners of 1874, confirmed as it is by the testimony of sanitary authorities throughout the world : that the vjater of a river ivhich receives sewage—and particalarly human excrement—slmidd not he used as a source of domestic water-supply if any less objectiono.hle water is obtainable ! So far as concerns Mr Bateman’s Report, I believe him to be (1) Wrong in even attemx>ting to form any estimate of the suitability of the Perth river water for drinking pur- IDOses; (2) Wrong in ttnc^errating the quantity per head of water that should be supplied to a community; (3) Wrong in omitting any estimate of the cost of di- verting the sewage of Perth from the river; (4) Wrong in recommending a large expenditure on mere extension of existing arrangements; (o) Wrong in substituting pumping by machinery and an elaborate reservoir system for a simple gravitation supi^ly; (6) Wrong in calling a mere extension of operations to Craigie and Kinnoull “ a better water-supply to the city of Perth”; and only (_7) Right when he describes Perth as “ now hide-bound, as it were, and confined to a limited area:” when he refers to the unsatisfactory joressure: the uselessness of the '/re- sent water-siqoply in case of fire: the inefficiency and in- sufficiency of the engines: the inadequate suj^ply: when, in short, he points out the too notorious defects and dis- advantages of the present system of sujiiily. (Signed) W. L. Lindsay.