WHERE THE CITY GARBAGE GOES.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10635, 20 April 1900, Page 2

WHERE THE CITY GARBAGE GOES.

THE UNSAVOURY SIDE OF CHRISTCHURCH. (BT OCR SPECIAL REPORTER.) Whether New Zealand gets the plague or not, the scare is likely to be good for us. It has set our municipalities at work, putting things to rights. Our eyes have been turned upon ourselves microscopically, and we are discovering witliout difficulty where matters might be improved and made cleaner. There has grown up suddenly a yearning desire to disinfect or inoculate somebody, or quarantine something, or catch the universal plague purveyors—rats. A correspondent of '•The Press" has drawn a realistic, but by no mean* imaginary, picture of an army of rodents marching in battalions on Linwood from the now disused rubbish tip, where the gaibage of the aity lies in all its festering noisomanese, and others have called attention to sundry places where city refu.se and it-wage are dealt with. This? is not a pleasant fcubjeet to tinquire into, but at a time like the present it becomes a matter of duty to giye it some attention. Yesterday a representative of "The Press's set out on a round of inspection.

Initial inquiries showed that refuse nightsoil and sewage are treated in different ways, and deposited in various localities. Thus— under sufferance since the passing of the Heathcote limitation Act —the City Council is still depositing its nightsoil on the Reserve, half-way to New Brighton, adjoining the tram line. Here, also, until a fewmonths ago, the whole of the miscellanec> u> refuse of the city was tipped. Now, however, the Council is sending the rubbish to a Reserve beyond Shirley, and hence the fear that the thousands of rate will be deprived of an honest livelihood, and taking the law in their own hands, march on and invade the city. Linwood and St. Albans contract for the disposal of their nightsoil, which is got rid of in the Avon dietrict, on the contractors' own property, and as for rubbish, there is none. If a ratepayer desires rubbish removed be gives notice, and the contractor removes it, but that doesn't happen often. Sydenham sends its nightsoil to the Heathcote district on sufferance, pending the completion of arrangements for a station at Uhaney's Corner, and the rubbish is tipped in a gravel pit in Huxley street, to the south-east. Thus it will be seen that the city and suburbs have to deal M'ith two classes of garbage—refuse and nightsoil.

The danger from the refuse is a double one; first, it breeds rats; second, tit breeds disease germs. It is no exaggeration to say that the City Council's now disused fe'p, at the Junction, on the way to New Brighton, fulfills all anticipations in both these directions. It has been a dumping ground for dead cats and decayed fish, and many other abominations. There are great ridges of rubbish, running out like jetties into the sand, and forming a conglomeration of old tins, broken crockery, hoop dron, bones, bits of wood, and, in fact, ail the waste matter of a city. In and out of these things the rate play hide-and-seek, while they look for the aforesaid sustenance. Our representative was not an authority on the habits of rats, not having had much experience, and he went there <in daylight. The result was that the festive scavengers did not appear specially for his edification. Hβ was assured by an authority, however, that if he only went there about ndne o'clock at night, with a lantern, he would see thousands. In fact, it was asserted that they would steal the lantern, they had become so bold. The City Council in the past made it warm for the rats by lighting iires and cooking them, but people complained of the smoke, and I the tip was voted such a nuisance, that when the Council shifted to beyond Shirley the bunking was discontinued. The Sydenham tip is apparently a harmless one. Only weeds and rubbish that no self-respect-ing rat would dream of eating, are put in it, and :t is covered up with earth.

The city nightsoil is another question. We have a sewage system with ■which less than 1950 houses, representing only about 8000 or 9000 people, are connected. As our population is considerably over 50,000 for Christchurch and suburbs, and over 16,000 for the city itself, one is inclined to wonder what the sewage .system is for and why in the name of common sense it is not extended. That the present unspeakable nightsoil arrangement is a source of disease there can be no doubt, and a visit to the reserve will convince anybody that the present mode of disposing of it is a menace to the neighbourhood. The whole of the city nightsoil has been dug into a small piece of the 15 acres the Council has used over and over again, the same ground having to do duty once, or even twice, a year. But the sewage farm has been described as equally dangerous. It ha* been asserted that it is a breeding ground for microbes. Our representative, in the course of his round, also visited the sewage farm. It contains 450 acres of land, or thereabouts. Only about 50 acres in the centre of it is actually used for the disposal of sewage, the remainder forms an outer fringe of jungli* and sandhill, over which only an exceedingly aggressive stench could find its way. The sewage is conveyed from the pumping station to a concrete' outlet about hsif & mile from the New Brighton tram line, -and then flows down a long opea race into a smaller and then into a larger settling pond. No one has ever been known to express a wish, to visit these ponds a second time. The writer doesn't care if he never hears of them again. There is about half an acre of black fcetid water, up through which sewer gas continuously bubbles, just as if endless hot springs were welling up below. These ponds are far out of the way, however, and at a distance of a hundred yarda or so the odour is almost imperceptible. From the settling pond? the sewage flows down a long race running down the side of a number of paddocks laid out with mathematical accuracy. There are flood gate* just between each pair of paddock?, through which the sewage can be turned at will. It flows down a race between a pair of these paddocks, which slope away from the dividing drain and towards the effluent ditch t-hat divides them from the «ext pair. There are gates at interval:* which let the sewage into small drains on either side, and out of these it flows in even sheets all over tie paddocks. There are twenty of these paddocks, like oases in a desert of hummocky sand. They are growing grass and lucerne, and the effluent is as clean and apparently as fresh as spring water. It is problematical whether the Sewage Farm is deleterious to health. Such farms are in existence in Great Britain and Europe in not nearly as sednded spot*. The Drainage Board's Engineer (Mr Cuthbert), who was kind enough to act as guide, pooh-poohed the idea of any danger to health. He pointed to other causes of disease in connection with the sewage system, however, which he was confident accounted for many deaths, namely, defective plumbing of traps. don° by plumbers outside the Board's jurisdiction. Within his own personal experience he said, he had come across cases where sewer gas was m».awfartTuvsd u\ the pipe connecting with the s«wer and escaped back directly into the dwellings. He spoke very strongly of the apathy shown by local bodies in getting ratepayers to connect with the sewer*. Sewer gas notwithstanding, among the possible sources of danger in connection with the city's garbage, in view of a possible invasion by ths» plague, the greatest appears to be rate.