Official Proceedings for the Annual Convention Volume 4 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ...discussed for many years by prominent sanitary engineers of Europe and America, and conclusions have been reached that are generally accepted; it seemed advisable, therefore, to your Committee to make "The Purification and Disposal of Sewage" the subject of this report. But, when your committee began to realize the magnitude of the subject chosen for consideration, the more humbled in spirit they became, their reverence for the many eminent engineers, chemists, and biologists, who have, in the past th: rd of a century, contributed from their original researches in this direction, increasing meanwhile. The purification and disposal of small quantities of sewage is a comparatively simple problem, especially where land suitable for intermittent filtration or broad irrigation is abundant and cheap. But the great problem is--how to purify and dispose of the volume of sewage of our larger cities--say of 100,000 population and over. And that the sewage of these large cities must eventually be purified before being turned into the rivers or other bodies of water in their vicinity, is clearly portended by the rising tide of public opinion as expressed in the daily journals from the most populous cities of the Northern States. Our information, based on the published information from about 40 sewage disposal plants in the Unaed States and Canada, mostly located in the smaller towns, is very complete, and the lif-rature descriptive of these systems is easily available. We, therefore, confine our remarks to the discussion of the general problem, rather than a description of completed works. ENGLISH STUDIES OF STREAM POLLUTION. Up to about the year 1815 it was a penal offense in England to discharge sewage or other offensive matter into sewers (or drains, as the...