Contamination of Cork water supply demands new system of purification
Cork, 21 October 1922 – The Cork City water supply is a danger to public health according to recent tests performed by Prof. A.E. Moore.
Prof. Moore's attention was drawn to this issue by the Resident Medical Superintendent of the Cork Mental Hospital who submitted four water samples. The examination showed that all four samples needed to be boiled in order to be fit for drinking.
This provided concrete evidence of the contamination of which people had been aware anecdotally for a long time. However, two recent reports delivered to city authorities indicate that improvements in the water service could be imminent.
A special meeting of the Water Works Committee received a report from Dr D. Donovan, Resident Medical Officer of Health. Dr Donovan called for a completely new process of sedimentation and filtration to be introduced with the aim of providing five million gallons of treated water daily, the equivalent of 50 gallons per head per day. This is more than is currently needed and would remain an adequate supply even if the population were to increase significantly.
A process of purification is urgently required, Dr Donovan states. This is because the rivers of the city and county serve as the ‘natural drainage channels of the surrounding land’ and are therefore subject to pollution. ‘The surface and sub-soil drainage from manured land under cultivation, the sewage effluents from isolated houses, the slop waters and the sewage from villages and, sometimes, even towns, and the waste products of industries on their banks frequently flow into rivers, and in this respect our river is grossly polluted.’
The scheme presented for consideration by Dr Donovan is one adopted by the London Metropolitan Water Board for the purification of the Thames, the efficiency of which is key to the public health of the huge population of London.
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
