Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Developing utilities on doctor's orders

■ A manhole cover

treatment facilities, the upkeep of inland water conveyance ditches, and the firm was also in charge of flood prevention as well as maintaining the city's public toilets and the preservation of water-quality standards.

The Sewage Works was operated as a government-owned company under community management from 1949 and then, from 1950 on, under city-council administration. The formation of Greater Budapest presented the company management with a formidable challenge as most of the newly annexed settlements had no sewage systems with only Újpest, Pesterzsébet, Kispest and Wekerletelep being supplied with their own piping networks. The per-residence availability of pipeline sewage collection in the capital city was almost reduced by half of a sudden, while the amount of wastewater grew by leaps and bounds in the wake of industrialisation. And there was little chance until the fifties of the situation improving in the outlying areas at a time when there were large numbers of unfinished construction jobs and urgent tasks demanding the authorities’ attention in the city’s interiors, too. Nevertheless, the construction of the Mexikói út trunk main was continued, the sewer in Szőlő utca was completed and so was the Cserhalom utca section of the Újpest trunk main as well as the relief main in Pesterzsébet.

The long-term plan of Budapest’s canalisation prescribed the major tasks of system development determining the location and capacity of sewage treatment facilities as well as covering the trunk mains and the pumping stations; the main emphasis, however, fell on the solution of a new problem, i. e. that of conveying sanitary sewage and stormwater runoff from the housing estates. Due to their distance from

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