Water supply London water supply infrastructure developed over many centuries from early mediaeval conduits, through major 19th-century treatment works built in response to
cholera threats, to modern, large-scale reservoirs. An ambitious engineering project to bring fresh water from
Hertfordshire to
London was undertaken by
Hugh Myddleton, who oversaw the construction of the
New River between 1609 and 1613. The
New River Company became one of the largest private water companies of the time, supplying the
City of London and other central areas. The first civic system of piped water in England was established in
Derby in 1692, using wooden pipes, which was common for several centuries. The Derby Waterworks included waterwheel-powered pumps for raising water out of the
River Derwent and storage tanks for distribution. , 1752. Two Newcomen beam engines pumped Thames water from a canal to reservoirs at
Green Park and
Hyde Park. Until the
Enlightenment era, little progress was made in water supply and sanitation. It was in the 18th century that a rapidly growing population fueled a boom in the establishment of private water supply networks in
London. The company created extensive ponds in the area bordering
Chelsea and
Pimlico using water from the
tidal Thames. Other waterworks were established in London, including at
West Ham in 1743, at
Lea Bridge before 1767,
Lambeth Waterworks Company in 1785,
West Middlesex Waterworks Company in 1806 and
Grand Junction Waterworks Company in 1811. The
S-bend pipe was invented by
Alexander Cummings in 1775 but became known as the U-bend following the introduction of the U-shaped trap by
Thomas Crapper in 1880. The first screw-down
water tap was patented, in 1845, by Guest and Chrimes, a brass foundry in
Rotherham. Maughan, of London, would develop the first instantaneous, gas powered, domestic water heater, in 1868. The Mixer tap being invented, by Thomas Campbell of
Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1880, to combine hot and cold water. The first documented use of
sand filters to purify the water supply dates to 1804, when the owner of a bleachery in
Paisley, Scotland, John Gibb, installed an experimental filter, selling his unwanted surplus to the public. The first treated public water supply in the world was installed by engineer
James Simpson for the
Chelsea Waterworks Company in London in 1829.
Sewer systems A significant development was the construction of a network of
sewers to collect wastewater. In some cities, including
Rome,
Istanbul (
Constantinople) and
Fustat, networked ancient sewer systems continue to function today as collection systems for those cities' modernized sewer systems. Instead of flowing to a river or the sea, the pipes have been re-routed to modern sewer treatment facilities. Before modern sewers were invented, cesspools that collected human waste were the most widely used sanitation system. In ancient
Mesopotamia, vertical shafts carried waste away into cesspools. Similar systems existed in the
Indus Valley civilization in modern-day Pakistan and in Ancient
Crete and
Greece. In the
Middle Ages waste was collected into cesspools that were periodically emptied by workers known as 'rakers' who would often sell it as
fertilizer to farmers outside the city. Archaeological discoveries have shown that some of the earliest sewer systems were developed in the third millennium BCE in the ancient cities of
Harappa and
Mohenjo-daro in present-day
Pakistan. The primitive sewers were carved in the ground alongside buildings. This discovery reveals the conceptual understanding of waste disposal by early civilizations. The tremendous
growth of cities in Europe and North America during the
Industrial Revolution quickly led to crowding, which acted as a constant source for the outbreak of disease. As cities grew in the 19th century concerns were raised about
public health. As part of a trend of municipal
sanitation programs in the late 19th and 20th centuries, many cities constructed extensive
gravity sewer systems to help control outbreaks of
disease such as
typhoid and
cholera.
Storm and
sanitary sewers were necessarily developed along with the growth of cities. By the 1840s the luxury of
indoor plumbing, which mixes human waste with water and flushes it away, eliminated the need for
cesspools. (top right) Modern sewerage systems were first built in the mid-nineteenth century as a reaction to the exacerbation of sanitary conditions brought on by heavy
industrialization and
urbanization. Baldwin Latham, a British civil engineer contributed to the rationalization of sewerage and house drainage systems and was a pioneer in sanitary engineering. He developed the concept of oval sewage pipe to facilitate sewer drainage and to prevent sludge deposition and flooding. Due to the contaminated water supply,
cholera outbreaks occurred in
1832, 1849 and 1855 in
London, killing tens of thousands of people. This, combined with the
Great Stink of 1858, when the smell of untreated human waste in the
River Thames became overpowering, and the report into sanitation reform of the
Royal Commissioner
Edwin Chadwick, led to the
Metropolitan Commission of Sewers appointing engineer
Joseph Bazalgette to construct a vast underground sewage system for the safe removal of waste. Contrary to Chadwick's recommendations, Bazalgette's system, and others later built in
Continental Europe, did not pump the sewage onto farm land for use as fertilizer; it was simply piped to a natural waterway away from population centres, and pumped back into the environment.
Liverpool, London and other places in the UK opening Bazalgette's
Crossness Pumping Station, 1865 As recently as the late 19th-century, sewerage systems in some parts of the rapidly industrializing United Kingdom were so inadequate that
water-borne diseases such as
cholera and
typhoid remained a risk. From as early as 1535, there were efforts to stop polluting the
River Thames in
London. Beginning with an Act passed that year that was to prohibit the dumping of excrement into the river. Leading up to the Industrial Revolution the River Thames was identified as being thick and black due to sewage, and it was even said that the river “smells like death.” As Britain was the first country to industrialize, it was also the first to experience the disastrous consequences of major
urbanization and was the first to construct a modern sewerage system to mitigate the resultant unsanitary conditions. During the early 19th century, the River Thames was effectively an open sewer, leading to frequent outbreaks of
cholera epidemics. Proposals to modernize the sewerage system had been made during 1856, but were neglected due to lack of funds. However, after the
Great Stink of 1858,
Parliament realized the urgency of the problem and resolved to create a modern sewerage system.
Liverpool However, ten years earlier and 200 miles to the north,
James Newlands, a Scottish Engineer, was one of a celebrated trio of pioneering officers appointed under a private Act, the Liverpool Sanitory Act by the Borough of Liverpool Health of Towns Committee. The other officers appointed under the Act were William Henry Duncan, Medical Officer for Health, and Thomas Fresh, Inspector of Nuisances (an early antecedent of the environmental health officer). One of five applicants for the post, Newlands was appointed Borough Engineer of Liverpool on 26 January 1847. He made a careful and exact survey of Liverpool and its surroundings, involving approximately 3,000 geodetical observations, and resulting in the construction of a contour map of the town and its neighbourhood, on a scale of one inch to 20 feet (6.1 m). From this elaborate survey Newlands proceeded to lay down a comprehensive system of outlet and contributory sewers, and main and subsidiary drains, to an aggregate extent of nearly 300 miles (480 km). The details of this projected system he presented to the Corporation in April 1848. In July 1848, James Newlands' sewer construction programme began, and over the next 11 years 86 miles (138 km) of new sewers were built. Between 1856 and 1862, another 58 miles (93 km) were added. This programme was completed in 1869. Before the sewers were built, life expectancy in Liverpool was 19 years, and by the time Newlands retired it had more than doubled.
London '', 1883
Joseph Bazalgette, a
civil engineer and Chief Engineer of the
Metropolitan Board of Works, was given responsibility for
similar work in London. According to the
BBC, "Bazalgette drove himself to the limits in realising his subterranean dream". He designed an extensive underground sewerage system that diverted waste to the
Thames Estuary, downstream of the main center of population. Six main interceptor sewers, totaling almost 100 miles (160 km) in length, were constructed, some incorporating stretches of
London's 'lost' rivers. Three of these sewers were north of the river, the southernmost, low-level one being incorporated in the
Thames Embankment. The Embankment also allowed new roads, new public gardens, and the
Circle Line of the
London Underground. The intercepting sewers, constructed between 1859 and 1865, were fed by 450 miles (720 km) of main sewers that, in turn, conveyed the contents of some 13,000 miles (21,000 km) of smaller local sewers. Construction of the interceptor system required 318 million bricks, 2.7 million cubic metres of excavated earth and 670,000 cubic metres of
concrete.
Gravity allowed the sewage to flow eastwards, but in places such as
Chelsea,
Deptford and
Abbey Mills, pumping stations were built to raise the water and provide sufficient flow. Sewers north of the Thames feed into the
Northern Outfall Sewer, which fed into a major treatment works at
Beckton. South of the river, the
Southern Outfall Sewer extended to a similar facility at
Crossness. With only minor modifications, Bazalgette's engineering achievement remains the basis for sewerage design up into the present day.
Other places in the UK In
Merthyr Tydfil, a large town in
South Wales, most houses discharged their sewage to individual
cess-pits which persistently overflowed causing the pavements to be awash with foul sewage.
Paris, France In 1802,
Napoleon built the
Ourcq canal which brought 70,000 cubic meters of water a day to Paris, while the
Seine river received up to of wastewater per day. The Paris cholera epidemic of 1832 sharpened the public awareness of the necessity for some sort of drainage system to deal with sewage and wastewater in a better and healthier way. Between 1865 and 1920,
Eugene Belgrand led the development of a large scale system for water supply and wastewater management. Between these years approximately 600 kilometers of aqueducts were built to bring in potable spring water, which freed the poor quality water to be used for flushing streets and sewers. By 1894 laws were passed which made drainage mandatory. The treatment of Paris sewage, though, was left to natural devices as 5,000 hectares of land were used to spread the waste out to be naturally purified. In 1863, work began on the construction of a modern sewerage system for the rapidly growing city of
Frankfurt am Main, based on design work by
William Lindley. 20 years after the system's completion, the
death rate from
typhoid had fallen from 80 to 10 per 100,000 inhabitants. in 1880
United States The first sewer systems in the United States were built in the late 1850s in
Chicago and
Brooklyn. In the United States, the first sewage treatment plant using
chemical precipitation was built in
Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1890.
Sewage treatment Initially, the gravity sewer systems discharged sewage directly to
surface waters without treatment. Later, cities attempted to treat the sewage before discharge in order to prevent
water pollution and
waterborne diseases. During the half-century around 1900, these
public health interventions succeeded in drastically reducing the incidence of water-borne diseases among the urban population, and were an important cause in the increases of
life expectancy experienced at the time.
Application on agricultural land Early techniques for
sewage treatment involved land application of sewage on agricultural land. One of the first attempts at diverting sewage for use as a fertilizer in the farm was made by the
cotton mill owner
James Smith in the 1840s. He experimented with a piped distribution system initially proposed by
James Vetch that collected sewage from his factory and pumped it into the outlying farms, and his success was enthusiastically followed by Edwin Chadwick and supported by organic chemist
Justus von Liebig. The idea was officially adopted by the
Health of Towns Commission, and various schemes (known as
sewage farms) were trialled by different municipalities over the next 50 years. At first, the heavier solids were channeled into ditches on the side of the farm and were covered over when full, but soon flat-bottomed tanks were employed as reservoirs for the sewage; the earliest patent was taken out by William Higgs in 1846 for "tanks or reservoirs in which the contents of sewers and drains from cities, towns and villages are to be collected and the solid animal or vegetable matters therein contained, solidified and dried..." Improvements to the design of the tanks included the introduction of the horizontal-flow tank in the 1850s and the radial-flow tank in 1905. These tanks had to be manually de-sludged periodically, until the introduction of automatic mechanical de-sludgers in the early 1900s.
Chemical treatment and sedimentation As
pollution of water bodies became a concern, cities attempted to treat the sewage before discharge.
Biological treatment It was not until the late 19th century that it became possible to treat the sewage by biologically decomposing the organic components through the use of
microorganisms and removing the pollutants. Land treatment was also steadily becoming less feasible, as cities grew and the volume of sewage produced could no longer be absorbed by the farmland on the outskirts.
Edward Frankland conducted experiments at the sewage farm in
Croydon, England during the 1870s and was able to demonstrate that filtration of sewage through porous gravel produced a nitrified effluent (the ammonia was converted into nitrate) and that the filter remained unclogged over long periods of time. This established the then revolutionary possibility of biological treatment of sewage using a contact bed to oxidize the waste. This concept was taken up by the chief chemist for the London
Metropolitan Board of Works, William Dibdin, in 1887: :...in all probability the true way of purifying sewage...will be first to separate the sludge, and then turn into neutral effluent... retain it for a sufficient period, during which time it should be fully aerated, and finally discharge it into the stream in a purified condition. This is indeed what is aimed at and imperfectly accomplished on a sewage farm. From 1885 to 1891, filters working on Dibdin's principle were constructed throughout the UK and the idea was also taken up in the US at the
Lawrence Experiment Station in
Massachusetts, where Frankland's work was confirmed. In 1890, the LES developed a '
trickling filter' that gave a much more reliable performance. Contact beds were developed in
Salford,
Lancashire and by scientists working for the
London City Council in the early 1890s. According to Christopher Hamlin, this was part of a conceptual revolution that replaced the philosophy that saw "sewage purification as the prevention of decomposition with one that tried to facilitate the biological process that destroy sewage naturally." Contact beds were tanks containing an inert substance, such as stones or slate, that maximized the surface area available for the microbial growth to break down the sewage. The sewage was held in the tank until it was fully decomposed and it was then filtered out into the ground. This method quickly became widespread, especially in the UK, where it was used in
Leicester,
Sheffield,
Manchester and
Leeds. The bacterial bed was simultaneously developed by Joseph Corbett as Borough Engineer in
Salford and experiments in 1905 showed that his method was superior in that greater volumes of sewage could be purified better for longer periods of time than could be achieved by the contact bed. The
Royal Commission on Sewage Disposal published its eighth report in 1912 that set what became the international standard for sewage discharge into rivers; the '20:30 standard', which allowed "2 parts per hundred thousand" of
Biochemical oxygen demand and "3 parts per hundred thousand" of suspended solid.
Activated sludge process Most cities in the Western world added more effective systems for sewage treatment in the early 20th century, after scientists at the
University of Manchester discovered the sewage treatment process of
activated sludge in 1912.
Toilets 's
urinals at the
Windermere hotel With the onset of the
Industrial Revolution and related advances in technology, the
flush toilet began to emerge into its modern form in the late 18th century, (
See Development of the modern flush toilet.) At the
Great Exhibition of 1851 held at
Hyde Park in London,
George Jennings installed the first public flush toilets. In urban areas, toilets are typically connected to a municipal
sanitary sewer system, while in more rural areas they are usually connected to an
onsite sewage facility (septic system). Where this is not feasible or desired,
dry toilets are an alternative option.
Water treatment Sand filter Sir
Francis Bacon attempted to
desalinate sea water by passing the flow through a
sand filter. Although his experiment did not succeed, it marked the beginning of a new interest in the field. The first documented use of
sand filters to purify the water supply dates to 1804, when the owner of a bleachery in
Paisley, Scotland, John Gibb, installed an experimental filter, selling his unwanted surplus to the public. This method was refined in the following two decades by engineers working for private water companies, and it culminated in the first treated public water supply in the world, installed by engineer
James Simpson for the
Chelsea Waterworks Company in London in 1829. This installation provided filtered water for every resident of the area, and the network design was widely copied throughout the
United Kingdom in the ensuing decades. The
Metropolis Water Act introduced the regulation of the
water supply companies in
London, including minimum standards of water quality for the first time. The Act "made provision for securing the supply to the Metropolis of pure and wholesome water", and required that all water be "effectually filtered" from 31 December 1855. This was followed up with legislation for the mandatory inspection of water quality, including comprehensive chemical analyses, in 1858. This legislation set a worldwide precedent for similar state public health interventions across
Europe. The
Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was formed at the same time, water filtration was adopted throughout the country, and new water intakes on the
Thames were established above
Teddington Lock. Automatic pressure filters, where the water is forced under pressure through the filtration system, were innovated in 1899 in England. Early attempts at implementing water chlorination at a water treatment plant were made in 1893 in
Hamburg,
Germany, and in 1897 the town of
Maidstone, in
Kent,
England, was the first to have its entire water supply treated with chlorine. Permanent water chlorination began in 1905, when a faulty
slow sand filter and a contaminated water supply led to a serious typhoid fever epidemic in
Lincoln, England. Dr. Alexander Cruickshank Houston used chlorination of the water to stem the epidemic. His installation fed a concentrated solution of chloride of lime to the water being treated. The chlorination of the water supply helped stop the epidemic and as a precaution, the chlorination was continued until 1911 when a new water supply was instituted. The first continuous use of chlorine in the
United States for disinfection took place in 1908 at Boonton Reservoir (on the
Rockaway River), which served as the supply for
Jersey City, New Jersey. Chlorination was achieved by controlled additions of dilute solutions of chloride of lime (
calcium hypochlorite) at doses of 0.2 to 0.35 ppm. The treatment process was conceived by Dr. John L. Leal and the chlorination plant was designed by
George Warren Fuller. Over the next few years, chlorine disinfection using chloride of lime were rapidly installed in drinking water systems around the world. The technique of purification of drinking water by use of compressed liquefied chlorine gas was developed by a British officer in the
Indian Medical Service, Vincent B. Nesfield, in 1903. According to his own account, "It occurred to me that chlorine gas might be found satisfactory ... if suitable means could be found for using it.... The next important question was how to render the gas portable. This might be accomplished in two ways: By liquefying it, and storing it in lead-lined iron vessels, having a jet with a very fine capillary canal, and fitted with a tap or a screw cap. The tap is turned on, and the cylinder placed in the amount of water required. The chlorine bubbles out, and in ten to fifteen minutes the water is absolutely safe. This method would be of use on a large scale, as for service water carts." U.S. Army Major
Carl Rogers Darnall, Professor of Chemistry at the
Army Medical School, gave the first practical demonstration of this in 1910. Shortly thereafter, Major William J. L. Lyster of the
Army Medical Department used a solution of
calcium hypochlorite in a linen bag to treat water. For many decades, Lyster's method remained the standard for U.S. ground forces in the field and in camps, implemented in the form of the familiar Lyster Bag (also spelled Lister Bag). This work became the basis for present day systems of municipal water purification.
Fluoridation Water fluoridation is a practice adding fluoride to drinking water for the purpose of decreasing
tooth decay. The architect of these first fluoride studies was Dr.
H. Trendley Dean, head of the Dental Hygiene Unit at the
National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dean began investigating the epidemiology of fluorosis in 1931. By the late 1930s, he and his staff had made a critical discovery. Namely, fluoride levels of up to 1.0 ppm in drinking water did not cause enamel fluorosis in most people and only mild enamel fluorosis in a small percentage of people. This finding sent Dean's thoughts spiraling in a new direction. He recalled from reading McKay's and Black's studies on fluorosis that mottled tooth enamel is unusually resistant to decay. Dean wondered whether adding fluoride to drinking water at physically and cosmetically safe levels would help fight tooth decay. This hypothesis, Dean told his colleagues, would need to be tested. In 1944, Dean got his wish. That year, the City Commission of Grand Rapids, Michigan-after numerous discussions with researchers from the PHS, the Michigan Department of Health, and other public health organizations-voted to add fluoride to its public water supply the following year. In 1945, Grand Rapids became the first city in the world to fluoridate its drinking water. The Grand Rapids water fluoridation study was originally sponsored by the U.S. Surgeon General, but was taken over by the NIDR shortly after the institute's inception in 1948.
Trends Sustainable Development Goal 6, formulated in 2015, includes targets on access to water supply and sanitation at a global level. In
developing countries,
self-supply of water and sanitation is used as an approach of incremental improvements to water and sanitation services, which are mainly financed by the user.
Decentralized wastewater systems are also growing in importance to achieve
sustainable sanitation. == Understanding of health aspects ==