LIVERPOOL'S DRAINAGE HISTORY: SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO MEPAS.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to outline the development of Liverpool's drainage and sewerage systems from the seventeenth century to the present day, with emphasis on the work of the country's first Borough Engineer, James Newlands. The paper concludes with a brief of the sewerage elements of the Mersey Estuary Pollution Alleviation Scheme (MEPAS), for which the author had responsibility from the early planning stages, through to Engineer to Contract for the majority of the Liverpool work. Originally intended for a non-engineering audience, the paper seeks to demonstrate the major influence of civil engineering on one aspect of public health, at a time when many diseases were clearly associated with poor living conditions and a lack of sanitation, but the medical or scientific proof was lacking. Liverpool's insanitary conditions, created by explosive population growth, forced the city to produce pioneering legislation. However, it is suggested that long-term reliance upon that legislation has created at least one present-day anomaly. 1997 marks the completion of the Liverpool elements of MEPAS, exactly 150 years from Newlands' appointment.