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The only way to secure self-cleansing sewers in many of the roads is to cut down into them and so create falls steeper than those of the surface, and this must be done in places to the extent of many feet, so that it would be absolutely impossible to have such sewers open, for the inconvenience would be intolerable, and the cost prohibitive.
5th. Underground sewers are therefore indispensable and if these are designed on proper principles and constructed of suitable materials and in a workmanlike manner there is no reason in my opinion why private closets and public latrines should not be adapted to the water carriage system.
3rd. This opinion is, I regret, in direct opposition to that of the Council as expressed in their Resolution, but it appears to me that I should not be adequately performing my duty if on that account I failed to advise on this matter to the best of my judgment.
7th. In England there are still a few towns which have the old-fashioned cesspits and others where the excreta is dealt with by some form or other of the pail system, but these methods are steadily giving way before the introduction of the ordinary water closet or the slop-closet by means of which the water supply, fouled in every possible way is carried off by the sewers.
3rd. I am free to admit that it may not be possible in Colombo to adopt the water carriage system to so great an extent as is being done at home, but I am quite clear that it would be a mistake to condemn the whole town for all time to any method which involves the retention of human excrement in or adjoining the houses a moment longer than is absolutely necessary.
The foregoing unexaggerated description of the existing arrangements shows that the present system (if system it can be called) is one under which the personal and household filth of the people is retained in, under, and around their dwellings for a time, and to an extent, which can have only one result viz:- a death rate probably twice as high as it need be and a corresponding amount of sickness and domestic misery.
Further it is a system in which the method of disposal of so much of the filth as is removed, is crude, unscientific and disgustingly objectionable.
So far as my experience qualifies me to give an opinion I have no hesitation in saying that the remedy for these evils is to be found in the provision of a complete scheme of underground sewers by means of which all this filth can be speedily removed from the dwellings of the people and discharged into the sea where it cannot do any harm nor give rise to any nuisance.