A pungent subject, but one that will not daunt those living in the country or in small towns with the problems of septic tanks for sewage as a normal part of life. For some decades now there have been experiments with reed-beds as an effective method of disposing of effluent. The reeds thrived on it and the smell was nil, it appears. Fine in theory and even in practice, but the snag was that so many hectares of reeds were needed per human input - tens of hectares, said an article in the French daily Figaro, for a small town of just a few thousand inhabitants.
By the way, the term used in French for this system sounds, to the foreigner quite romantic. It is "Lagunage naturel", calling to mind blue skies and sand and sun. Quite inaccurately, of course. But things are looking up. A French body of research has been going into this question with some vigour and has, by some means, been able to bring down the quantity of reeds needed from 10 square metres to two for every citizen of the town or habitation. And, claims a spokesman for the researchers in the "Quality of Waters" department of the official organisation, setting up a reed filtration reservoir is no more costly than a normal water purification station: about 1,500 francs (say £200) per person in a town of 1,000 people.
Currently there are about 15 such installations in France and in Europe. It seems that the limit for such a system to work is a town of from 3,000 to 3,500 people. And, writes the reporter JeanPaul Croize, there are quite a number of such in the 30,000 communes of France. And only last weekend in the Sunday Telegraph magazine, regular columnist Adam Nicholson related his installation of his own system of filtering sewage by reed-beds. The main sewage from the house goes into a buried brick settlement tank, but that from a lavatory in an out-building, an oast house, goes to the reed-bed. He is thinking of replacing the brick tank with another reed bed.
By the way, the French report says that some trees, especially willows and poplars, carry out the same purifying process. Y