Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
As a child swimming off the coast of south Devon in the 1960s, I believed the warm water passing through my legs was the Gulf Stream current. Now, as an adult, I realize it was actually raw sewage being discharged into the ocean.
In those days, it was not unusual for coastal towns to pump sewage out to sea where it was believed to be safely diluted. These pollution problems are now resurfacing because of poor management rather than ignorance six decades on.
[...] The U.K.'s wastewater network comprises both sewage and surface water pipes. Homes flush sewage to treatment works, where solids, bacteria and other contaminants are removed. The treated water is then discharged to rivers or the sea.
[...] Sewage and surface water occupy separate systems, but the pipe network is interconnected and combined in parts, the idea being that during heavy rain, the surface water will flow into sewage pipes and dilute it. Today, the opposite is often likely to happen, and it's partly due to the country's ancient and overburdened system for managing wastewater.
The network was designed by Joseph Bazalgette. Construction began in 1858 and was completed in the mid-1870s. There has been little investment to update the pipes or expand the treatment facilities in the intervening 150 years.
One exception is London's new super sewer, which is due to enter service in 2025. Even so, the company responsible admitted it would need to be twice as big to prevent waste spilling into the Thames.
[...] England is the only country with a completely privatized water industry. Any pollution arising from these private water companies is monitored by the Environment Agency.
Routine monitoring of rivers and coastal waters is essential to ensure they're in good condition. Because of funding cuts since 2010, water sampling by the Environment Agency halved between 2013 and 2019. The agency also lost its independence that year when it was absorbed into the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs.
U.K. water companies are commercial enterprises with operating profits for 2021 posted at £2.8 billion. Since 1991, £57 billion has been paid out in dividends to shareholders, of which most are based overseas and include banks, foreign governments, hedge funds and businesses based in tax havens.
[...] Water companies may need to be forced to invest in infrastructure if fines are not proving sufficient motivation. Failing that, revoking licenses may become the government's only way forward.
Liz Truss has many challenges ahead. The cost of making the U.K.'s sewage and surface water network fit for purpose has been estimated at a minimum of £150 billion, and perhaps as much as £500 billion.
This may be too much for water companies to absorb. Nevertheless, something as fundamental as sewage treatment and drainage infrastructure should be a national priority, and high on the to-do list of the new prime minister.
The Bazalgette overhaul of the London system was seen as one of the great engineering feats of the era. Can something like that be repeated today with all the private companies involved?
(Score: 4, Informative) by choose another one on Monday September 12 2022, @04:02PM (2 children)
The backwards bit in TFA is surface water drainage.
Most surface water here in UK is NOT in separate pies/systems, it goes straight into the sewer along with what's called "foul water", and it is this that causes most pollution problems.
The amount of piss/sh*t/bathroom/kitchen etc. waste water is fairly constant and predictable, and the sewage treatment plants can cope with it and treat it so it's fit to go back into rivers/sea (with some exceptions - soluble drug content of treated sewage is a newish problem, but not just in UK). The problem comes when it rains a lot, and a sh*tload of surface water goes into the sewers along with the s*it and the treatment plants can't cope and you get raw sewage overflow. Relatively diluted raw sewage overflow, given all the extra surface water, but still nonetheless a lot nastier than the properly treated stuff.
The UK sewage system either needs to be redesigned to separate out foul & surface water, OR the treatment plants need much much more capacity to cope with storm surface water volumes, neither will be cheap. The original Victorian design is not to blame - I suspect they put surface water through so that storms would clear the system out every now and then, and they made the pipes plenty big enough, problem is there are way more people putting their sh*t into the system now...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 12 2022, @04:18PM
Water / sewage handling in and around London was never really planned, it just sort of happened. Then the health impacts became unacceptable and they poured money at a sewer system like it was a German invasion, and they achieved a somewhat acceptable level of performance - for the time, but that system was designed in the middle of the 1800s and "acceptable" sewage handling was a bit different then than modern definitions. So, today we get a relatively inexpensive $4B upgrade to that system, but with politics being what it is, would you ever expect such a megaproject to deliver everything that today's environmentalists consider essential performance of such a system? Much less the environmentalists of the coming 50 years who will no doubt document some very real shortcomings of the new system.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by DeathMonkey on Monday September 12 2022, @06:29PM
The "proper" solution, at least regarding Best Management Practices, is to use a Separate Stormwater System these days. UK does have a Separate Stormwater System now, and using it is required for new buildings.
But upgrading all the old buildings and old systems is gonna be crazy!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 12 2022, @04:19PM (4 children)
Yeah from what I know of civ eng in the USA that's not how we roll, this must be a UK thing.
According to Wikipedia, average rainfall in Wales is higher than either east or west side of the USA (East of the mississippi gets 2 to 4 times more rain than west in the USA) There are probably areas that get more than Wales. Also I looked up wales for no reason, since it seems to be a London story I should have looked up london rainfall.
Anyway, yeah, interesting differing outlook. We totally do NOT do that intentionally here in the USA (aside from the usual 1% of everything is weird, so there probably does exist an anecdote despite the general rule)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 12 2022, @06:24PM
The solution to pollution was dilution, all over the world, until the 1960s. Slowly we have come around to the idea/ideals that diluted poo isn't really good enough for discharge into our wild fisheries.
Personally, I think the move to centralized sewers for rural areas is a political boondoggle, properly operating septic tanks and drain fields _should_ be better for the environment overall than force-main sewers to central treatment facilities, at least up to population densities of 10 people per acre, or so, but... Just a few of the problems with privately owned septic treatment facilities are: 1) they're not maintenance free in a lot of places, 2) the people that own them (like most people) are cheap bastards and will do anything to band-aid an improperly functioning system rather than repair it properly, 3) the people who build and repair septic systems are far more profit oriented than health and safety oriented, 4) the politicians who write rules around the construction and maintenance of privately owned septic systems are far more interested in the welfare of local businesses (like septic construction / repair companies) than they are the welfare of the constituency who elected them; said constituency who try not to think about the poo just under the surface of their suburban lawns, 5) you can't monitor your population's viral loads or drug usage when they all dispose of their own poo locally in their own yards, 6) my GOD how much money is there in the construction and maintenance of centralized sewer and water systems? I mean: just look at all that pork waiting to be shared!
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday September 12 2022, @06:33PM (2 children)
I think it's more of an "old" think than a UK thing!
They are modernizing, they do have stormwater specific systems now so that's an improvement. But upgrading centuries worth of infrastructure is just harder....
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 13 2022, @09:59AM (1 child)
It can still be a problem, the first heavy rain after a longish dry spell can flush enough dogshit into the storm drains that they still count as sewers.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 13 2022, @04:43PM
We're not building stormwater treatment systems because that shit is clean!