Excerpt from A Handbook of Sewage Utilization The question of Sewage Utilization, together with that of the drainage of towns and the purification of our rivers and water-courses, has been for some years past forcing itself upon public attention. Numerous Reports have been pre sented to Parliament, all setting forth the magnitude of the evils of the present system, and representing the urgency of immediate reform. As far back as the year 1858, a Com mission [s. U. C., of which Lord Essex was Chairman, reported to this effect, and as yet little or nothing has been done. There is no doubt that what has chiefly deterred Local Boards, or other governing bodies in towns from taking any action in the matter, has been the difficulty of finding out the most satisfactory mode of practically dealing with what everyone admits to be a gigantic difficulty. Most of the systems of Sewage Utilization hitherto adopted in many of our towns have proved unremunerative as speculations; the success of others has been supposed to depend upon certain special conditions, unattainable in other places and some are known to have failed to accomplish the most important part of their programme, namely, that of dealing with the sewage matter in such a way as to render it per fectly innocuous, both during and after treatment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.