Bridgeton pioneer., 1910-07-28
SEWAGE PLANT
TROUBL SOME.
Many Complaints of Terrible
Stencil.
n OF PROPER PLANT.
Millville Paper Score the Filtering
Beds For Disposing of
Sewage.
The Millville Republican saws:

The Millville Republican says:
The Republican has since the first
OF June had it's attention called sew
eral times to the terrible stencil that
comes from the sewer disposal beds
on the banks of the river below South
Millville.
So bitter were these complaints that
trip was taken out there to see the
condition of affairs. 1t must be ad-
mitted that in the many sewer dis
posal plants visited in and about the
large Eastern cities nothing like the
state of affairs was ever seen.
The receiving beds were covered
three feet deep on top with mix
ture of unpurified sewage and rain
water.
The approach of the plant could be
detected by the odor long before it
was reached. The water that was
flowing into the river was not clear
(that day. as it should have been.
There had been a severe storm and
sewers had been overcharged with
surface water from the streets and
roofs of houses.
Chickens had been drowned in the
liquid paste and the whole region
there owned by the city looked like
Hogarth's paintings of degradation,
filth and slums.
The attention of the city engineer
was called to the condition of affairs
all right as soon as the surface water
at the plant and he went out there and
said he thought it would come round
had drained off.
Yesterday the plant was again COM
plained of. The charge was that two
basins were not working properly,
that the stencil was horrible; that
the people living on South Second
street were obliged to keep windows
closed, when wind was right to keep
the odor out of their houses, that the
excrement wa not raked off of the
beds, burned or buried, that the beds
had not been cleaned out once since
the sewage was turned into the beds.
There was also minor charge that
there had been $50 worth of chickens
killed by getting caught in the nau-
seous compound. That was the own
er's fault. He should have kept his
chickens confined to the runaway and
not let them run at large.
But who is responsible for the bad
working of the disposal plant? The
Council who voted to pay the bills
last fall over the Committee on Sew
ers' protest, the present Board of
Health, under whose care it should be,
the present Council Sewer Committee,
tn citizens generally, or no one?
The writer of this has visited plenty
of sewer beds, with aeration wells and
without them as well, but he never
saw such mess as was seen at Mill
ville's plant after the heavy rain. In
other cities after the sewage has fl
tered through the first bed, the sew
age is turned into another bed, and
the insoluble matter raked off and
either burned or buried. Thus the
odor is minimized and passersby on
highway would hardly know that a
disposal plant was nearby.
The object of the aeration we'll is to
help pump the water after it has pass
ed through the receiving beds and is
not to dissolve as some think the in
soluble matter. That must be raked
off and burned. Otherwise it keeps
collecting, lays there a fostering, ILL
smelling mass, polluting the air and
causing the disposal plant to become
public nuisance.
The local Board of Health should
look into this matter and call atten-
tion of the State Board to the unsani-
tary state of affairs at the plant. 1t is
their sworn duty to do so, to investi-
gate the above charge. Dereliction on
their part may mean the death of
some one in South Millville fom in
haling the poisonous germ laden air
blown off the sewer disposal bed.
It is understood that the State
Board has not accepted this plant. If
that be so Council should see, before
the year is up, that contractors make
that plant good.