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A major contributor to water pollution problems as they reached major intensity first in England during the early 19th century and in the United States and western Europe a little later was the Industrial Revolution, with its combination of concentration of population and industry. Few major industrial users of water, in their early years of development, paid serious attention to waste products that left the plant. Even today, approximately 50 percent of the total wood used in a modern paper mill goes into the industrial waste-water stream and must be removed by treatment of the waste water. Textile mills discharge some waste fibres and also frequently discharge multi coloured dyes.

During the years 1912-15, the British developed another process that proved to be still more effective in the removal of organic material from the waste water. Recognizing the trickling filter as merely a means of bringing together the organic matter in the waste water and air as a source of oxygen, British engineers reasoned that by releasing compressed air in a tank of waste water they could achieve a greater measure of control, and hence degree of treatment. They also observed that the circulation of some of the sludge gave a vast area for the same biological action that was going on in the trickling filter, by combining the organisms carried by the sludge, oxygen supplied by the incoming air, and new food supplied by the settled waste water entering the aeration tanks. By varying the amount of air and the amount of sludge returned to the process, higher levels of treatment could be obtained. Because the sludge was teeming with bacterial and associated biological life, the sludge was called "activated" and the process called the "activated-sludge process". It proved highly efficient and was rapidly adopted by cities around the world with severe treatment problems.

Coordination with surrounding areas. One of the awkward problems confronting city engineers of the 20th century in nearly all countries has been impossibility of isolating a metropolitan area from neighbouring regions. Rivers carry pollution from city to city, even country to country. In Washington the problem was encountered in a relatively mild form; much of the Maryland suburban area drains into Rock Creek and the An acostia River, which flow through the District of Columbia; to try to keep the two streams as clean as possible the District of Columbia and the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (of Maryland) entered into an agreement to handle each other's flow at a reasonable cost. All the domestic waste water of the suburban areas is now connected into District sewers, with payments made to handle the waste waters. As part of the agreement, the Maryland Commission helps to finance both the construction and the operation of the District of Columbia Water Pollution Control Plant.

Future problems in the field include proper means of financing the construction and operation of sewer systems including such appurtenances as pumping stations and plants for the control of water pollution, but most significantly higher and higher degrees of waste water treatment. Research in progress in many countries of the world promises to achieve a high degree of reclamation, and even recycling at reasonable cost.

The control of water pollution is not dependent wholly on the civil and environmental engineers who customarily design the facilities for the collection and treatment of waste waters. For the intelligent operation of such structures, the cooperation of chemists, biologists, bacteriologists, and limnologists (freshwater scientists) has been considered essential for many years. Now, with the added emphasis on ecology and environment, the application of the principles of these broad fields of biology must also he included to meet the problems of the growing world population and its demands for a greatly improved environment.