Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
supply and sewerage systems divides the responsibility between municipal
capital on the one side and the individual installations of middle-class
homeowners and home builders for the middle-class market on the
other.”
57
This observation applies to the pre-1880 period of private water
companies as well, insofar as those outside of the middle and upper classes
were unable to tap into the water supply which at that point was available
only to a limited market.
58
The basic form and function of modern waterworks were established by
1880. Major cities began to devise financial plans based on enhanced rev-
enue generation and long-term debt to plan construction and maintenance
of new systems or to secure old systems from private companies. Sources of
supply were no longer limited to local wells, ponds, and streams. Distribu-
tion extended over wider areas, owing (in part, at least) to the use of iron
pipe and a variety of pumping techniques. And a concern for water quality
led to research on, and in some cases implementation of, filters. All these
changes occurred in the Age of Miasmas, which placed a pure and plenti-
ful water supply squarely at the heart of environmental sanitation.
By the late nineteenth century, waterworks were generally regarded as
a public enterprise, justified as such because of the need to protect the
public health and to supply water on a city-wide basis. As with wastewater
systems and solid waste collection and disposal in later years, modern
city-wide water-supply systems were conceived in an Age of Miasmas.The
structure of those systems and their functions were linked inextricably to
the goals of environmental sanitation, that is, to utilize the prevailing sen-
sory tests of purity to deliver a product that would not only be free of dis-
ease but also would be utilized to mitigate against disease. Plentiful supplies
of water, for example, could help to flush away stench-ridden wastes.
Despite the fact that massive increases in piped-in water proved to be a
major reason for wastewater systems, water supply and sewerage were
addressed separately in the nineteenth century. However, the justification
for wastewater systems was also graphically linked to the precepts of envi-
ronmental sanitation. The leap of logic from liquid wastes to solid wastes
was made possible by the adherence to environmental sanitation, to a point
of view which almost etched in stone the primary directive that wastes had
to be removed from the presence of humans as quickly as possible to pre-
serve the public health. In essence, sanitary services in this period were lit-
tle more than elaborate transportation networks (or water and waste
redirection systems).
