Great Stink, Parliament passed an enabling act, in spite of the colossal expense of the project, and Bazalgette's proposals to revolutionise London's sewerage system began to be implemented. The expectation was that enclosed sewers would eliminate the stink ('miasma') that was thought to be the cause of cholera, and as a result eliminate cholera epidemics. Sewer works At that time, the River Thames was little more than an open sewer, empty of any fish or other wildlife, and an obvious public health hazard to Londoners. Bazalgette's solution (similar to a proposal made by painter John Martin 25 years earlier) was to construct a network of of enclosed underground brick main sewers to intercept sewage outflows, and of street sewers, to divert the raw sewage which flowed freely through the streets and thoroughfares of London to the river. The plan included major pumping stations at Deptford (1864) and at Crossness (1865) on the Erith marshes, both on the south side of the Thames, and at Abbey Mills (in the River Lea valley, 1868) and on the Chelsea Embankment (close to Grosvenor Bridge; 1875), north of the river. The outflows were diverted downstream where they were collected in two large sewage outfall systems on the north and south sides of the Thames, called the Northern and Southern Outfall Sewers. The sewage from the Outfall Sewers was originally collected in balancing tanks in Beckton and Crossness, then dumped, untreated, into the Thames at high tide. The system was opened by Edward, Prince of Wales in 1865, although the whole project was not actually completed for another 10 years. Partly as a result of the Princess Alice disaster, extensive sewage treatment facilities were built to replace the balancing tanks in Beckton and Crossness in 1900. The basic premise of this expensive project, that miasma spread cholera infection, was wrong. However, the unintended consequence of the new sewer system was the removal of the causal bacterium from the water supply, thereby eliminating cholera in areas served by the sewers. Instead of the incorrect premise causing the project to fail, the new sewers mostly eliminated cholera, and also decreased the incidence of typhus and typhoid epidemics. Bazalgette's capacity for hard work was remarkable: every connection to the sewerage system by the various Vestry Councils had to be checked and Bazalgette did this himself and the records contain thousands of linen plans with handwritten comments in Indian