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-:A.BIAN TRACT No. 8r. 

MUNICIPAL WATER. 


(PUBLISHED FEBRUARY I 898.) 

MANY of the smaller municipalities of England and Wales remain 
without a municipal water supply ; but of the large towns only in 
London, Bristol, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Norwich, Gateshead and Portsmouth 
does the supply remain under private control. In Scotland 
and Ireland all the large towns enjoy a municipal service. 

Legal facilities for the transfer of a water supply from private to 
public control do not exist. Sometimes it is possible to introduce a 
new supply. Richmond, for instance, severed itself from the Metropolitan 
Water District in 1876, and established a municipal supplydrawn from wells and other sources. Very frequently Urban Districts 
and small townships are supplied by the corporation of a neighboring 
municipality. Bolton, Bury, Nottingham and Salford, for 
example, supply wide areas beyond the city boundaries. Ossett 
obtained an Act enabling it to construct a reserve or distribution 
reservoir; the water is purchased in bulk from the Dewsbury and 
Heckmondwike Water Board. Often an agreement is arrived at 
before the necessary Act of Parliament is obtained. Powerful companies 
have frequently been able to insist that purchase be effected 
under the provisions of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts, which 
ensure a large bonus to the shareholders. From the public point of 
view the most satisfactory course is to insert in the Act authorizing 
purchase a special clause defining the basis on which the price paid 
for the undertaking is to be calculated. 

In most municipalities the Corporation administers the water 
supply, and experience shows that body to be the most suitable 
authority. Edinburgh has a Water Trust. The Belfast supply is 
controlled by a Water Commission, but the Commission and the 
Corporation appear apt to come into conflict and to oppose each 
other's policy. The proposal to place London's supply in the hands 
of a Trust was received with general disfavor by the authorities 
concerned. 

Birmingham's Municipal Supply. 

In 1874 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Mayor of Birmingham, conceived 
a scheme for the municipalization of the city's water supply.
In those days Mr. Chamberlain's schemes had the happy knack of 
becoming accomplished facts in comparatively brief spaces of time, 
and the Bill authorizing the purchase of the undertaking of the local 
water company was passed in 187S· In supporting that Bill in the 
House of Commons, Mr. Chamberlain laid down this excellent 
doctrine : "It seems to me absolutely certain that what Professor 
Simon called 'the power of life and death,' should not be in the 


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hands of a commercial company, but should be entrusted only to 
the representatives of the people. I think the supply of water 
should not be directly or indirectly dependent on the profits of a 
private association." The Corporation were empowered to require 
the Company to sell the undertaking by arbitration, failing agreement. 
The shareholders received payment by annuities, to extinguish 
which after five years a sinking fund was established. A reserve 
fund of £ so,ooo was also formed. 

When the undertaking was taken over by the Corporation, the 
authorized capital of the Company was £756,ooo, of which £671,975 
had been issued. The Purchase Bill left the House of Commons 
retaining the special clause inserted by the Corporation for the 
determination of the terms of purchase. The House of Lords 
insisted that purchase should be effected under the provisions of 
the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts, and the shareholders accordingly 
received a bonus of about £25o,ooo. The market value of the 
undertaking at the time of purchase was about £r,roo,ooo. The 
price paid was £I,362,2 7 5, the capitalized value at twenty-five years'purchase of the annuities issued. Thus, Birmingham paid over 
£r,3oo,ooo for an undertaking which cost less than, £7oo,ooo, 
and was worth £r,roo,ooo in the market. Annuities were actually 
created of the annual value of £2,376 in respect of possible profit on 
capital authorized but not called up, and £87 5 as compensation for 
unpaid back dividends. Yet water rentals were greatly reduced by 
the Corporation, and the reserve fund formed in accordance with the 
Act yields an income of £2 ,ooo a year for the alleviation of the rates. 

The growth of the population has compelled the Corporation to 
seek fresh sources of supply. In 1892 Parliament sanctioned a scheme 
for bringing water by an aqueduct eighty miles in length from an 
uninhabited area of high Welsh moorland. The authorized expenditure 
is £6,6oo,ooo ; but this will impose no burden on the 
ratepayers. The Corporation have reduced water rents by £33,000 
a year since the supply came into their hands. By re-imposing 
£24,000 of that annual sum all charges on the Welsh scheme will be 
met. The dams and reservoirs are being constructed by the Corporation 
; but the aqueducts, tunnels and railways are let to contractors. 

Glasgow. 

Glasgow has the most efficient water supply in the Kingdom. 
In r855 the Corporation acquired authority to buy out the Companies, 
and also to bring a new supply from Loch Katrine, thirty-
four miles away, at a cost of £r,237,503. In r86o the new works 
were opened, and the old supply from the Clyde abandoned. The 
daily supply brought from Loch Katrine is fifty million gallons; but 
the capacity of the system is being doubled. The city has derived • 
enormous advantages from municipalization. All houses are connected 
directly with the main, and cisterns, those fruitful sources of 
impurity, are as unknown as the charges for" extras," on which the 
officials of the London comp:mies expend so great an amount of 
ingenuity. No vexatious limitations in the quantity used are im



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posed, and statistics prove that the consumer shows no disposition to 
waste the water simply because he has plenty of it. The companies 
that once controlled the supply charged a water rental of fourteen 
pence in the £. The municipal rate has been gradually reduced to 
sixpence, and hospitals and fountains are supplied free of charge. 
The annual profit is about £ 4o,ooo, which sum is applied to the 
sinking fund for the extinction of the water debt of nearly£3,ooo,ooo. 
Moreover, in the use of soap, and vegetable infusions such as tea, 
soft water is much more efficient and economical than hard. An 
ingenious statistician has calculated that £so,ooo a year is thus saved 
by the people of Glasgow in tea and soap. 

Various Municipal Supplies. 
Leeds acquired its water supply in 1852. In 1865 the Corporation 
entered on the scheme which has given the city abundant water, and 
the Corporation is able to make a considerable profit by selling water 
to several neighboring towns. 
In 1847 Manchester bought the then existing undertaking, and 
in I 879 the Corporation acquired Lake Thirlmere, in Cumberland, 
in no way dismayed by the fact that an aqueduct ninety-five miles 
in length would have to be constructed. 
The history of many other large towns is on similar lines, and 
small towns and urban districts have followed their example. Hereford 
paid £I31000 for the supply. In 1895-6 the expenditure, 
including interest and contributions to sinking fund, was £3,162. 
The income was £4,9 r 8, so that a considerable profit was made. 
On the other hand, Kendal, which acquired its supply in I894 for 
£33196I, derived an income of only £2,895 to meet a total expenditure 
of £3,356. Ludlow expended £283 on account of its municipal 
supply in I895-6, and received £332. Its water rate is only 3d. in 
£, and is probably lower than in any other municipality in the 
country, with the exception of Montgomery, where no charge is 
made for water used for domestic purposes. 

Municipal versus Private Control. 

Croydon is supplied partly by the Corporation and partly by the 
Lambeth Company. A house with a rateable value of £25, which 
uses municipal water, pays a water rental of I6s. 4d. A house of 
the same rateable value, in the same city, but within the area of the 
Lambeth Water Company, has to pay a water rental of £I ISS. 

Before embarking on its policy of municipalization, the London 
County Council made enquiries as to the experience of other municipalities 
which had carried that policy into effect. All declared 
municipal water a success. A public body, in fear of the electorate, 
takes stringent precautions against pollution, and is careful to make 
timely provision for a growing population. Water rentals can be 
reduced to a minimum, and any profit earned is appropriated for the 
relief of the rates. London has to thank a private company for its 
East-End water famines and its high water rates ; and to a private 
company Maidstone owes its typhoid epidemic. 


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London's Fight for Municipal Water. 

The history of London's struggle for a municipal water supply is 
parallel with the history of the London County Council. The 
Council at first found itself powerless to spend money on the promotion 
of Bills enabling it to purchase the undertakings of the eightMetropolitan water companies. The necessary powers were obtained, 
and in I 894 Purchase Bills were lodged. They passed a second 
reading and had reached an advanced stage in Committee, when the 
Liberal Government fell and the Bills were lost. The fight in Committee 
had been severe ; but a compromise had been arrived at 
between the friends of the water monopolists and the representativesof the Council. It was agreed that in deciding the price to be paid 
for the undertakings certain considerations should be kept in view. 
The chief were the condition of the property of the companies, their 
legal rights and responsibilities, their ability to provide for a continually 
increasing population, and the arrangement by which competition 
had been eliminated. The Purchase Bills were broughtforward a second time in March, I 896, but Mr. Chaplin would only 
allow their passage on condition that purchase should be effected 
under the provisions of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts, which 
would give the companies the full market value of their undertakingsplus IO per cent. for compulsory purchase. Compulsory disturbance 
of business premises or compulsory purchase of land usually entails 
loss, and in such cases the Lands Clauses Acts are relevant ; but the 
only loss likely to be suffered by the holders of shares in water companies 
through compulsory purchase is the cost of re-investing their 
money. The Council's representatives in Parliament refused to giveseveral millions of the ratepayers' money as a bonus to the companies, 
and again the Bills were lost. The conditions under which 
the Council agreed to purchase are contained in a resolution adoptedin December, I895, setting forth that: "the purchase price of the 
existing water undertakings shall not be assessed under the provisions 
of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts, but shall be based 
upon the fair and reasonable value of those undertakings, due regardbeing had to the rights, special circumstances, and obligations of the 
companies."

A third time the Bills were brought forward in the House of 
Commons, and a third time they failed to pass. Instead of municipalwater, Mr. Chaplin gave London a superfluous Royal Commission. 
It has been London's misfortune that the question of her water 
supply has become a pawn in the game of party politics, and apparently 
she will have to continue to drink impure water supplied at 
exorbitant and unjust rates, and suffer the dangers and inconveniences 
of recurring water famines, until the balance of parties is altered in 
the Council and the Commons. 

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London : Printed by 
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