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JUST A DROP OF WATER

A little over a hundred and thirty years ago what is now England’s second city lived in squalor and disease. At that time infant mortality was very high and life expectancy for adults was between thirty-three and thirty-eight depending upon sex. Disease included, scarlet fever, diphtheria, chronic diarrhoea, tuberculosis, whooping cough, typhus fever, typhoid and many more. The squalor was born of overcrowding, poor sanitation and the resulting stench that filled the air of almost every part of the city.
During the nineteenth century thousands died in Typhoid and Cholera epidemics and in a growing industrial city that was bad for business, stifled trade and cost industrialists money in lost orders/production. Something had to be done to improve the living conditions.

Joseph Chamberlain was a successful businessman and politician of the nineteenth century, one time lord Mayor of Birmingham and then MP.What would be known as the “Hygiene” factors of industrial production today were of great concern to him.
In the closing half of the nineteenth century the city due to the rapid progress of the industrial revolution was growing and between 1876 and 1891 the demand for water from a growing population had doubled with no prospect of it ever being satisfied.
The City of Birmingham had already taken into municipal control the utilities of gas and water[The electric supply was finally acquired by 1900] and by 1893 they were about to embark on a project so far sighted that it would provide the city with clean uncontaminated drinking water for at least the next hundred years. The project had been some years in the planning stage, the problem was that a great deal of Birmingham stands at 600ft above sea level and what was needed was a significant water catchment area that stood above that level because in those days pumps could and often did break down and they had to be powered by something so the basic premise was a gravity fed system of water supply. The catchment area was eventually found but it was 75 miles from Birmingham near Rhayader in what was then Radnorshire in Mid Wales, somehow it had to be transported to Birmingham where it could be treated and used.

An act of Parliament was passed despite great opposition from many London MP’s to affect a compulsory purchase of the land, 180 square kilometres in the Elan and Claerwen Valley’s. Although the landowners were compensated the 100 people moved from the land never were. The poet Shelly spent several weeks in the valley’s in 1811/1812 desparate to secure the house at Nantgwyllt for his wife Harriet wich now lies below the water. The area was ideal for the purpose and James Manserg had already established that the rainfall there often exceeded 1830mm/year, the vallies were narrow and easily dammed being of impermeable rock to retain the water but the deciding factor was the elevation, which by and large was above 600ft. That meant that a gravity feed system was possible. The final route taken by the water had a gradient of 1 in 2300 and terminated at Frankley reservoir about 10 miles from the centre of the city. The pipeline that carried the water is almost all underground and in places lies at a depth of 600 feet, water pressure inside the pipe is said to achieve 17.5 bar in at least one stretch of its length that is 257 pounds per square inch. The cost of the pipeline was over 2.5 million pounds that was one and a half times the cost of the original dam at Elan valley.

The work began in 1893,apart from the 100 souls that had to move out, there were 18 farms, a school and a church that had to be demolished. The church was replaced at another location by the Birmingham Corporation and was called “Nantgwllt Church.
A railway line had to be constructed to carry workers and building materials to the site often running to several thousand tonnes of freight each day and it took three years to build the line. Today there is a village called Elan village near the Caban-Coch reservoir, whilst the work was in progress this was the site where a village of wooden huts housed the workforce. It had a school for children under 11 years old
[Anyone older was expected to work alongside the men]. There were two hospitals, one for injuries sustained on the project whilst the other was an isolation hospital as infectious diseases could seriously delay the project and cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea were very common killers of the time. There was a library, Public hall, a shop, a canteen and a public house although women were not allowed to use it.
A “Camp guard” who discouraged “Unauthorised visitors” also controlled the importation of alcohol to the village.
The streets were lit by electric light powered by a hydroelectric generator and there was also a “Bath house” which the men were allowed to use three times a week although women were only allowed one bath a week.
New workers were kept separate from the workforce spending a night in the “Doss house” on the opposite bank of the river to the village until they had been “Deloused” and medically examined for infectious diseases only then were they allowed to cross the river to the village.

The undertaking was huge even by the standards of the present day, it employed 50,000 men and the first water did not find its way to Birmingham until 1904.
The cost was a meagre 6 million pounds from start to finish. That investment increased the life expectancy of every man, woman and child in the city of Birmingham, infant mortality began to decrease and cholera, typhoid and diarrhoea epidemics were brought under control.
Thomas Barclay a member of the committee that oversaw the project said ”True to our motto our Corporation has taken time by the forelock and seeing that something like ten years will be required to bring the work to completion has commenced its preparations already, it has decided to acquire these treasures of untold value” The motto of the City of Birmingham was and still is “Forward”.
Today the Elan valley facility supplies Birmingham with 300 million litres of water a day. A second dam built across the Claerwen valley in 1952 contributes a further 300 million litres to bring the total available supply to 600 million litres a day of arguably the best water available from a tap [faucet] anywhere in the country. The water is so pure that it is often used straight from the tap to top up lead acid batteries, which normally require “Distilled water”.

The project led the way in domestic water supply in England and many such projects followed to supply other cities.

Recently parts of London, Kent and the south east of England have suffered an unusual lack of rainfall, the water supply in these areas rely upon underground sumps that fill with water that has permeated through the limestone and chalk to fill the sumps during the wetter parts of the year. The increasing effect of global warming has meant that rainfall has decreased and because snowfall has been at an all time low the sumps have been starved of that water too. Restrictions upon the use of water are in force right now and whilst there has been rainfall the sumps remain empty, in fact locally it is said that it is the wettest drought ever known. The water supply for parts of London and the southeast are about to run dry or so near dry that there will not be enough drinking water for this heavily populated area. It is fortunate then that over one hundred years ago a city had the foresight to install a water supply second to none.
Plans are in place to pipe water from Birmingham’s reservoirs at the Elan and Claerwen valley to fill the drained sumps in the southeast whilst maintaining its supply to Birmingham as well. The casualty will almost certainly be the river Wye
for it is into that river that the overspill from both reservoirs flows at a rate of 120 million litres a day.
The domestic water supply in the UK is about as good as it gets anywhere in the world but in the past thirty years the sales of bottled water have increased to a point where the market is worth 1,500 million pounds sterling. In England that equates to £25 per head of population every year. The death toll from causes directly related to poor drinking water supply around the world continues to rise. A child dies once every fifteen seconds somewhere in the world because the water supply is contaminated or there just is no water supply. Cholera, typhoid, chronic diarrhoea are still the main causes of infant mortality where water supply is a factor. Yet watch any sporting event on any television around the world and the bottled water is flouted before a captive audience, which for the most part cannot afford the bottle let alone its content.

The staggering amount that is spent upon bottled water by the British public is £25 pounds a head per year; the cost to provide clean, safe, drinking water for a lifetime for just one of the billion that do not have it is just £15. We have it “On tap” but choose not to use it and would rather empty a supermarket shelf whilst filling the coffers of the companies that market bottled water. It takes from 5 minutes to two hours to drink the contents of the bottle dependant upon how thirsty you are, in that time between twenty and four hundred and eighty children have died because they have not got what we take for granted but choose not to use………..a precious drop of clear, safe drinking water.

In one year; instead of emptying a supermarket shelf for the status symbol of a label on a clear plastic bottle of water why not refill that same bottle with a product we have already paid for that we have on tap all year round and which is basically “The best available” product. The money could be spent to provide clean drinking water for life for one hundred million people………simple is it not?

JP.

Posted: July 12, 2006

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