From J. R. Catlin
Seascale, Cumbria
At present all the water we abstract from our reservoirs and rivers for
flushing toilets and so on is eventually discarded and discharged out to sea,
obviously on the assumption that rainfall will continue to compensate for our
wasteful practices.
As a farmer I am required to collect all the rainwater, urine and other
liquids that fall on my concrete yards in an underground tank and return it to
the fields via irrigators. Solid matter is filtered out and separately spread on
the fields to return the nutrients from whence they came. Farmers are not guilty
of depleting our water resources.
Future domestic and business premises, like the farms, should also be
required to return the water they use in an acceptable clean condition back to
where nature intended it to be—underground. This could be done with
properly designed underground filter tanks. These should be orders of magnitude
removed from the present septic tanks and would possibly require some
research.
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The greatest loss is rainwater falling on our roads, pavements and parking
lots. It could easily be solved if each area was provided with adequately sized
filter tanks.
The economies arising from my suggestion in sewage treatment plants, drains,
sewage tunnels and so on would be astronomical.
