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Show A Serious Waste The removal of wastes is a proper and neces- sary function of water, both in the state of nature and amid the increasing complexities of a modern civilization. It does not follow, however, that the removal of wastes need, through neglect or mismanagement, befoul our streams and rivers and render them ugly, barren, dangerous, and useless. We cannot afford such waste. Polluted water impedes economic and social progress. Polluted water threatens life and health, blocks the expansion of industry, and increases the cost of its products. It robs us of recreation and vaca- tion areas which once lost can never again be re-created, destroys our sports fishing, swimming, and boating. It forces us to spend large sums of money for elaborate water-supply systems reach- ing hundreds of miles into the mountains, and for expensive water purification works. It im- pairs the value of our property, poisons our shell- fish food, kills our fish, birds and other wild-life, damages our boats, ships, buoys, piers, and water- front structures. Our cities, our industries, and our farm and grazing land are the three major sources of pol- lution. The sewers in cities discharge domestic waste, such as toilet flushings, bath and dishwater, restaurant and laundry washings, hospital and hotel refuse, and all kinds of other unwanted matter. Industrial wastes consist of acids, oil, chemicals, grease, animal, and vege- table materials-some poisonous, some noxious, and still others merely noisome and offensive to the eye and nostril. Agricultural pollution is made up of drainage from livestock feed lots, dairy barns, pigpens, manure heaps, corncob piles, and other farm refuse. Poison sprays and dips may likewise con- taminate streams. Water so laden with wastes may become unfit not only for drinking, cooking, washing, fac- tory use, farm use, swimming, boating, fishing, or irrigation, but unfit even to live near and look at. It becomes degraded to one principal use, that of a waste carrier. That is why so many of our rivers today are sometimes referred to bitterly as open sewers. Effect of Urban and Industrial Growth How did all this come about? It is first to be noted that pollution, quantitatively speaking, is directly proportional to population and indus- trialization. A hundred years ago this country was predominantly rural and agrarian with rela- tively few cities. Today we have a relatively highly industrialized economy with more than 17,000 incorporated communities, more than 200 of which have a population in excess of 50,000. Three-fifths of our people now dwell in towns and cities. Nearly half of us are in 150 cities, occupying less than 2 percent of the land area. Great spurts of industrial development have accompanied this growth and concentration of population. Well before 1900, pollution had begun to de- mand attention in the East. In certain areas there the water had to be purified to make it fit to drink. The first filter plant in the United States was built in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., on the Hudson River, in 1875. By 1900 other cities had installed individual waterworks capable of sup- plying two million people-3 percent of the population-with purified water. From a health standpoint this was not enough. In 1900 more than 23,000 people died of typhoid fever, a water- borne disease. Alert to the dangers of impure water, sanitary engineers moved to develop puri- fication; and in 16 years the number of people served by public waterworks increased tenfold, to a total of 20 million or nearly one-fifth of the population. Even this was not enough; in 1916, typhoid still claimed 13,000 lives. Today, some 16,000 waterworks supplying nearly 100 million people-two-thirds of the population of the United States-are playing a part in virtually eliminating typhoid. During this same period our towns and cities were building sewer lines to dispose of their waste-not as fast as waterworks perhaps, but in substantial number. The object was the same- to avoid disease, to eliminate the dangers of epi- demics. The first sewer systems were built in 188 |