Politics is unavoidable

Private companies can't pay out large dividends if they invest in decent utilities infrastructure

So everything hangs on by its fingernails

water and power being good examples

That's why they nationalised our utilities after the war, to make them fit for purpose

In many locations surface runoff water goes into the same sewer system as foul water (sewage). Heavy rainfall can lead to huge flow rates, many times more than the usual sewage flows.

You and me ADY1 , the only ones to 'tell it like it is' .

The system will not be changed until it causes the death of the children of rich folk. For evidence supporting this view look at the delayed response to the Cholera epidemics in victorian times.

Which actually is when most of our sewer systems were built. Now, they are well overdue for a rebuild, and the population has grown significantly.

Cheers, Tim

I live in the Southern Water area and they were recently fined £90 million for illegally dumping raw sewage into rivers and the sea over many years, this practice was carried out because basically Southern Water instead of allocating funds to extend and improve their infrastructure over the years as the demand grew, they fed the cash to the shareholders. Complicit in this it appears was the Environment Agency because they should have been monitoring and prosecuting the offenders. If there are occasions when your system will be overwhelmed by abnormal rainfall etc. then it is common sense to provide storage so that the excess can be retained and processed when the event has passed this will be a not infrequent event as our climate changes, It would appear that other water companies are also guilty of inadequate provision of storage, Thames Water is one but has recently embarked on a programme that will go some way towards solving their problems. As for surface water being fed into the foul water system in the past the regulations allowed this so there are many older properties who are legally entitled to discharge rainwater into the foul system because of the legislation that existed at the time the properties were built. This practice is now illegal for new developments. I was born in Eastbourne and now live just outside of it, when I was a youngster, a long time ago now, you could stand on the seafront and somedays see that the colour of the sea close to the beach was a different colour, this was because in those days, the 50’s, the sewage was not treated but discharged through a very short outfall pipe direct into the sea. Nowadays the outfall pipe discharges some 3 kilometres out to sea and the discharge has been partially treated, they run it through screens to remove solids then blast it with uv light to minimise the bacteria content that is discharged. Recent housing developments in our area had no access to mains sewers, Southern Water were slow to invest in the necessary infrastructure, the houses were connected to communal septic tanks on the developments and these were serviced periodically. In the last two years Southern Water were forced to lay a new foul water sewer to service these new houses, the new drain is about 2 kilometres long and had to be laid trough the High Street of our village at a depth of about three metres, causing much disruption, and is adjacent to another foul water sewer that desperately needs to be replaced because of problems with frequent collapses, but there isn’t much prospect of that occurring due to Southern Waters abysmal investment policy. One can only surmise that the fact that the amendment in Parliament was defeated was due to pressure from the Water Industry, says it all really they are protecting their profits. Dave W

In 2016 it was reported that the CEO of WW earned £768,000
Not for profit, huh?

pgk

Anybody joining the dots here………………?

Too much demand on gas………electricity………..sewage treatment…………water next anyone.

Too much demand on rail , road.

Too much demand.

Generally the only way to avoid this happening everywhere is to seperate surface water and sewage into seperate systems, and discharge the surface water directly into rivers and sea. As the planet warms (slightly) evaporation from the sea will increase, and there will be more rain, and it is impossible for any sewage treatment plant to cope with this amount of water appearing at their inflow point in storm conditions. There must be an overflow of some sort to act as a safety valve. If the treatment plant floods then the problem is massively compounded, there is no effluent grid, all water and sewage treatment is local. Once we have a seperate system, it must be kept clean, and the rivers that it discharges into must be dredged, something which has not happened for a long time!

We had this done in Driffield(Pop 13000) some time ago, it was a massive undertaking. took over a year, and involved a remote controlled hydraulically powered mole about 3ft diameter which drilled from point to point dragging a lining behind it. It was operated from towers built at about 200 yard intervals down the centres of the roads, which had to be closed. In short, disruption and expense on a grand scale. Since this was done, overflow discharges are now very rare, but still occasional.

Rivers and sea can cope with sewage up to a certain point, after all, all the aquatic life craps in it! What it cannot cope with is high phosphate and nitrate agricultural run off, and above all the worst pollutants are the detergents soaps, bleaches and other stuff that pours into the sewer from washing machines, dishwashers, the chemicals needlesly chucked down the toilet, and drain cleaners etc. These kill the bacteria that digests the sewage, and any septic tank owner should know that they can never use these products or their septic tank will stop working in a very short time, and need constant pumping out! Industrial outfalls are largely licensed and monitored to make sure that they are acceptable.

There is no easy answer to this, apart from the government legislating on the water companies to use their profits for upgrades rather than high salaries and shareholder dividends! Renationalising water, power and transport just throws the cost from the private companies onto the taxpayer, because governments have no money!

Phil

Edited By Phil Whitley on 24/10/2021 14:45:07

Hi,

I used to work for Anglian Water some 27 years ago in the "lumpy water" department, in those days sewage treatment works were design to operate at a maximum of 3 x "dry weather flow". In other words once incoming flow had exceeded 3 x dwf then any excess ended up in the river….untreated…

Some larger treatment works did have storm water tanks that intercepted this extra high flow and then got treated when it was possible, but this was the exception and they did fill up quickly.

But this was a long time ago, probably different now.

Regards

Derek

Doh! Silly me!

IIRC, the proposed amendment resulted from a petition. People power? Next you'll be claiming we live in a democracy…