SANITARY PROBLEMS.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 100, 28 April 1888, Page 4

SANITARY PROBLEMS.

"They manage these things/better in France," cannot apparently^be said with truth regarding the manner of disposing of city night-soil and other filth. In. Paris, at the present time, the authorities are deeply exercised over the, question of disposing of the city sewerage. The noble river Seine, of which Parisians are justly proud, is being poisoned by the tilth of the city and mburbs being swept into it, and the experiment of using the night-soil as manure at Gennevilliers has only been a partial success. Very large vegetables are grown there, but their flavour is declared to suffer from the employment of this kind of manure, and the air of the region is charged with unbearable effluvia. That is the Auckland experience, pure and simple ; and the cure which the Parisians propose is wonderfully like that which our local authorities have adopted/ They propose to send the night-soil and sewerage to a new destination, with a view to manufacturing it into marketable manure. This simply means a shifting of the locale of the nuisance. In consequence of the Parisian proposal to make Acheris and St. Germain the scene of this unsavoury experiment, the thousands of residents in those suburban districts are up in arms, and are warmly agitating against the project. What the upshot may be it is impossible to say; but the facts appear to indicate that sanitary science is the most neglected of all the " ologies." In one respect Paris is far ahead of a new community like ours. Her streets are daily swept by an army of 40,000 scavengers, and this removal of all " matter in the wrong place " disposes of one of the most fruitful causes of disease. There, too, everything is utilised, for the scavengers sort out the rubbish which they collect from the streets and dust boxes, amounting to 300,000 tons per annum, and the articles of use add over a million sterling every year to th,e wages of these necessary workers. In Auckland, much that is useful is allowed to go to waste and become dangerous to health, because of the absence of manufacturing industries which consume these substances. It is the perfect system of sewage and scavenging that makes London the healthiest of large cities, and as Auckland grows greater attention must.be paid to these matters if the salubrity of the city is to be maintained.