WATER SUPPLY: For Municipal, Do ascetic at iding Its Sources. and Dis tribution. does not frail Of iwypsy sur siaysgattuu, ilsigation or power development, but is confined princi pally to the consideraticm of the sources, collec tion. conservation, purification and distribution of water for municipal, domestic and potable Perecoes. This Is becoming an increasingly en 'togging subject for all progressive communi ties, since scientific research has shown that many natural waters are the media for the prop agation and dissemination of countless colonies of micro-organisms of vegetative and animal growths, including bacteria, some of which are pathogenic. Some water bacteria have been localired and classified as shown by Prescott and Winslow in their 'Elements of Water Bacteri ology.' Many other micro-organisms have also been localized and classified as shown by George C. Whipple in his 'Microscopy of Drinking Water.' The nature and characteris tics of some of these organisms must be studied in all water supply pr and therefore will be considered to some extent under some of the Subtitles to follow.
)ew Navri trfooreated the name Ischis0 myrtles' for all micro-organisms :r i that des ignation is used by some bacterial ists for all such organisms. Botanists use Ow lesignatiss for vegetative organisms. •Bacteri however, is the name usually applied to livin. organisms reface and ground waters. Neither lakes, rivers, ponds, nor wells are free from suet* micro-organisms. • Not infrequently thousands of bacteria are found in a cubic centimeter of natural, which is ' -usually denominated •raw' water. Dr. A. H. Frassall of London (1850) is reported to be the first to identify living organisms in drinking water. He was followed by E. N. Horsford, L. Radlkofer, Ferdinand J. Cohn, James Bell, L Hirt, W. G. Farlow, Ira Remsen, H. C. Sorby, I. D. Hyatt, George W. Rafter, George C. Whipple and others. Dr. A. C. Houston of the London Metropolitan Board in 1912 reported 10,315 microbes per centimeter of raw Thames water, although says Prof. William P. Mason it is now generally admitted that such a medium is not favorable to their growth.' Dr. Houston found that they lived longer in deep Loch Katrinc water, one of the sources of supply for Glasgow, than they did in the Thames.
Dr. Robert Koch traced the cholera epidemic of 1892, in Hamburg, which did not prevail in Alton across the Eli, to the contamination of its unfiltered raw river water supply by the cholera germ, rtirillina cholera Asiatic*, or comma bacillus. discovered by Koch in 18S4.
Alton used filtered water from the Elbe and largely escaped that cholera epidemic. Since the discovery of the specific cholera germ by Dr..Koch, greater caution is exercised by munic ipalities to prevent the contamination of their water supplies by the spirilla chokra Asiatic-a, and cholera epidemics are less frequent. In 18B7 Mesita. Sicily. had an epidemic of cholera due to polluted water. Typhoid epidemics have occurred more frequently than Asiatk cholera, for the typhoid bacilli (B. typhosi) are more generally distributed and the contaminatioa of water supplies thereby has been not uncommon George C. Whipple in 'The Microscopy of Drinking Water.• p. 80, says, •All quiescent sur are liable to contain microscopic organisms in considerable numbers. The water that is entirety free from them is very rare.' From the 'Waterworks Handbook' of Flinn Weston and Bogert and other publications ate excerpted the following data as to bacterial con tents of a few river waters per cubit centimeter.
Bacteria in the Niagara vary from 10,000 to 300,000 per cubic centimeter; in the Seine from 300 per cubic centimeter above Paris to 200,000 per cubic centimeter below Paris; in the Spree from 82,000 per cubic centimeter above Koepe nick to 10,000,000 per cubic centimeter at lottenburg; in the Ohio they averaged 16,500 per cubic centimeter; in the Delaware 7,680 per cubic centimeter; in Crystal Lake, Mass., 185 per cubic centimeter; in Lake Ontario 7,040 per cubic centimeter; in the Mississippi upwards of 2,000 per cubic centimeter; in the Potomac up wards of 4,000 per cubic centimeter and in the Merrimac upwards of 11,000 per cubic centimeter; in raw Thames water 10315 microbes per cubic centimeter; and in the Isar a: Munich opposite an effluent of sewage 121,861 per cubic centimeter. In some waters bac teria have exceeded 200,000 per cubic centimeter. Nearly all surface waters have some bacterial content and in many cases the bacteria are pathogenic. Neither are all springs nor well waters entirely free from bacterial in fusion. This may not be sufficient nor of the kind to pollute such waters for some genera are not pathogenic. However, it has been con tended that some non-pathogenic bacteria may become pathogenic under favorable conditions. That is notably so in the case of bacillus coil contusions (B. coli), when nourished on sewage and on other typhoid waste.