Environmental Engineering FOURTH EDITION

Environmental Engineering 3

Figure 1-1. Human excreta disposal, from an old woodcut (source: W. Reyburn,

FZushed with Pride. McDonald, London, 1969).

the contents of chamberpots out the window (Fig. 1-1). Around 1550, King Henri II
repeatedly tried to get the Parliament of Paris to build sewers, but neither the king nor
the parliament proposed to pay for them. The famous Paris sewer system was built
under Napoleon ID, in the nineteenth century (De Camp 1963).
Stormwater was considered the main “drainage” problem, and it was in fact illegal
in many cities to discharge wastes into the ditches and storm sewers. Eventually, as
water supplies developed,l the storm sewers were used for both sanitary waste and
stormwater. Such “combined sewers” existed in some of our major cities until the
1980s.

‘In 1844, to hold down the quantity of wastewater discharge, the city of Boston passed an ordinance
pmhibiting the taking of baths without doctor’s orders.