under Section 24 (7) "every District Council for a rural district shall be a body corporate by the name of the "District Council," &c. Section 8 (1) (i) empowers the Parish Council also "to execute any works (including "works of maintenance or improvement) incidental to or consequential on the exercise of any of the foregoing powers," &c. Section 8 (1) (k) "to contribute "towards the expense of doing any of the things above "mentioned, or to agree or combine with any other "Parish Council to do or contribute towards the expense of doing any of the things above mentioned;" but by Section 8 (2) (3), "Nothing in this section shall derogate "from any obligation of a District Council with respect "to the supply of water or the execution of sanitary "works." For these the District Council is responsible under Section 25 (1). From a case decided early in 1894, in respect of the Kirkby Malzeard Parish Council, it appears that the powers conferred upon the Parish Council under Section 8 amount only to such as may be delegated to it by Section 15 of the Parish Councils Act, 1894, as to a parochial committee under the Public Health Act, 1875 Section 202, by the District Council. Both the District and Parish Councils, however, seem to have openly stated that the powers in question might be made the subject of a lawsuit. Section 64 of the Public Health Act, 1875, is as follows: "All existing public cisterns, pumps, wells, reser"voirs, conduits, aqueducts, and works used for the gratuitous supply of water to the inhabitants of the "district of any local authority shall vest in and be under the control of such authority, and such autho"rity may cause the same to be maintained and plen "tifully supplied with pure and wholesome water, or may substitute, maintain, and plentifully supply with "pure and wholesome water other such works equally convenient; they may also (subject to the provisions "of this Act) construct any other such works for "supplying water for the gratuitous use of any in"habitants who choose to carry the same away, not for 'sale, but for their own private use.” I have already given some account of the late Archdeacon Denison's waterworks at East Brent (Surveyors' Institution Transactions, vol. xiii. pp. 165-8). In 1892 the Axbridge Local Board, having in view a comprehensive scheme of water supply for a large portion of the plain within their district, advised the Archdeacon that under Clause 64 of the Public Health Act, the waterworks which he had constructed in 1866 for the supply of part of East Brent parish had become vested in them on the passing of the Act, though they had allowed him in the meantime to maintain them at his own expense. In 1894 the Axbridge District Council became the Rural Sanitary Authority. No question as between it and the East Brent Parish Council seems ever to have arisen upon Section 8 of the Parish Councils Act, 1894, the superior right of the District Council being admitted by Mr. F. W. Bishop, of Bridgwater, the legal adviser of the Parish Council. Though the District Council admitted that East Brent parish could supply itself, they included it as one of five parishes (Biddisham, Badgeworth, Weare, Lympsham, and East Brent) to form a special district of supply from Cross Spring, near Axbridge. I was again instructed to survey and to report to the Archdeacon with special reference to the Axbridge scheme, and made a levelled survey of the knoll and waterworks, gauging as far as possible all the springs, August 27-30, 1895. Brent Knoll rises out of the aforesaid plain of alluvium (which is about 20 feet + O. D.), and consists of two parts, the tableland bounded by a bold escarpment of marlstone, which just touches 200 feet on the west side, and the knoll proper rising to 457 feet + O. D. The slopes of the tableland consist of Lower Lias Shales, the escarpment and outer fringe of the tableland, which is nearly mile wide on the west side, of marlstone 40 feet thick; the slopes of the knoll of Upper Lias, 265 feet thick, and the cap of oolitic sandstone and sandy limestone, 40 feet thick. The strata lie in a spoon-shaped form, and the water-bearing stratum, the marlstone, falls to its lowest level in East Brent Gully. The total area of marlstone is 0·236 square mile, of which 0·1805 square mile drains to the gully. This at one inch per annum gives an average of 7,159 g. p. d. of spring water alone. It was proposed by me to increase the storage by adding capacity for 100,000 gallons of flood water and spring water mixed, or 14 days' supply at 7,000 9. p. d. At the Local Government inquiry into the Axbridge scheme, held at Axbridge by Colonel John Ord Hasted, R.E., February 1, 1896, the scheme was opposed by me on behalf of the Archdeacon, and by Mr. F. W. Bishop on behalf of the East Brent Parish Council, who put forward a scheme of their own. Both these schemes, and all others for bringing water into East Brent Parish, were opposed on the behalf of the Archdeacon on the ground that East Brent parish can supply itself. With respect to the transfer of the waterworks, without compensation, under Clause 64 Public Health Act, Mr. F. W. Bishop directed my attention to the following judgments: "In the case of Coverdale v. Charl"ton (4 Q. B. D., 104, and 48 L. J., Q. B., 128), it was held "that although a well may be on private ground, if it had been used by the public so as to give them a pre scriptive right to its user, it vested in the local autho"rity, and the well became their property; and in Smith "v. Archibald (5 App. Cas., 489), it was decided that a "local authority may do any acts necessary to protect "and maintain for public use wells, &c., vested in them situated on private land; but in Edwards v. Jolliffe (W. N., 1877, p. 120), it was laid down that the local "authority may not commit trespass on the land as dis"tinct from the wells, &c., for the purpose of thereby "improving the water supply." A prescriptive right could not have been acquired at East Brent so early as 1875. Although the principle of the Watershed Board has been accepted as regards Conservancy Boards, it has not reached that desirable result in the case of water supply areas, except by means of unworkable combinations under the Public Health Acts and the Local Government Acts, or by private Acts of Parliament. Notwithstanding all powers to prevent pollution, the Leeds City Council are so unable to give them effect in the Washburn Basin, that they are applying to Parliament for powers to buy up the whole watershed. It is almost superfluous to mention that Birmingham has also had to buy up a whole catchment area of 40,000 acres for a similar reason; facts which prove that those who advocated the principle that the watershed area is the natural geographical unit of administration for water supply before the Local Government Act of 1888 were right. |
