sh.t in Rivers

[IvanV]

I would suggest that East Coast Mainline is probably a better counterexample and model than bailing out the banks.

ECML earns a large profit. They went bankrupt over bidding too much to government to access that profit. When you take it over, without having to pay those large premiums to government, suddenly you have a very profitable business again. But the government no longer has the sums the companies bid to run it.

It's just arithmetic, not success. The arithmetic is very different with a water company.

[tenchboy]

I'm sorry I didn't get far with this one
England river clean-up effort ‘poor’, says watchdog [BBC]
Because when I got to...

A government spokesperson said this government had done "more than any other" to restore waterways.

I couldn't think of anything other than, "but how many years have you been in control now? This is your fault and no-one elses"; and turned the page.
I readily admit, not having read the complete article, that I may be rushing to judgment but my prejudice comforts me.

[IvanV]

I'm sorry I didn't get far with this one
England river clean-up effort ‘poor’, says watchdog [BBC]
Because when I got to...

A government spokesperson said this government had done "more than any other" to restore waterways.

I couldn't think of anything other than, "but how many years have you been in control now? This is your fault and no-one elses"; and turned the page.
I readily admit, not having read the complete article, that I may be rushing to judgment but my prejudice comforts me.

The key here is to find some data over time.

Here is some data back to 1986 on some important chemical indicators of quality. It stops in 2019, for the moment, because of Covid. So for these four chemical indicators of quality, which I will summarise in words as they are in separate graphs:

Ammonia - was roughly level at 0.1 mg/l 2010-19, having come down rapidly from around 0.7 mg/l in the late 80s.
Phospate - was roughly level at 0.2 mg/l 2010-19, having come down rapidly from around 1.1 mg/l in the late 80s
Biochemical Oxygen Demand - reduced from about 3.2mg/l to plateau at 1.7mg/l in the late noughties, but has since rebounded to around 2.0 mg/l
Nitrate - reduced from about 6 mg/l to plateau at about 4.5 mg/l in the late noughties, but has since rebounded to around or over 5 mg/l

So some important progress over time on ammonia and phosphate, which has been maintained in recent years. But some indication of reversal of the trend in BOD and nitrate, starting just when the Tories came to office, who'd have guessed it.

Here is some data back to 2009 on surface water biodiversity status classification. Unfortunately it doesn't go further back, and it is worth copying in the main graph.

Surface Water Status Classifications.jpg (123.06 KiB) Viewed 176 times

As we can see, things have been trending worse more or less for the entire period of the graph. It would be nice to see how it was back in the 80s, for comparability, as I suspect things were really dreadful back then. But as with the graphs above, there is evidence of a backward trend for the period of the Tory administration.

I don't think there is anything newer than this. This gives much more detail on the latest figures, but in most cases the latest figures are 2019.

So when they say "done more than any other", that is certainly not reflected in outcomes, as the visible trend on all the key indicators is either worse or level. And some really large improvements were achieved back in the 1990s to early 2000s.

I don't think the government spends money itself on these things, rather it directs water companies to spend money collected from water customers on things. Maybe they have directed the water companies to spend more that they have been spending before. But evidently they are fighting a battle against the previous decade of neglect.

[tenchboy]

Cracked it. The statement was curtailed; it should of have said: "A government spokesperson said this government had done "more than any other" to restore waterways to the hay day of the mid nineteenth century Big Stink before Mr Goody Bazelgette came along: after all, it's what rivers are for: hurrah for cholera and the thing those rowers got."

[IvanV]

..
... before Mr Goody Bazelgette came along ...

The saintliness of Mr Bazalgette is much overstated. Baz made a large mistake, for which we - and large parts of the rest of the world which followed our lead - are suffering the consequences. This mistake was the combined sewer, which took both the foul drainage of dwellings and the surface water drainage of paved surfaces, including buildings. This presented a short term cost saving, but a long term monetary and environmental cost increase.

That is why when it rains hard, and the treatment works can't cope with the volume arriving and has to overflow it, the effluent is both surface water and foul water.

The combined sewer avoids the necessity, on occasion, of having two pipes running along a street. And a bit of rain helps to keep the foul effluent flowing. So there were practical reasons for choosing the combined sewer. But the consequence is the title of this thread and the considerable expense of doing something about it. I think treatment works would also be cheaper to design and run if they had separate foul and surface inputs.

[Martin_B]

I think treatment works would also be cheaper to design and run if they had separate foul and surface inputs.

As someone who has had some experience of designing water treatment works, why do you think this? Rainwater run-off isn't as clean as you think; the first rain after a dry spell can wash all manner of debris into the drains, including quite a high Biological Oxygen Demand. Only after sustained rainfall does drains water become 'clean'.

Also consider that when Bazelgette created the sewers there was still a high quantity of London housing without internal plumbing, and horses were still the main means of transportation, so rainwater runoff contained significant human and animal waste anyway. To say he made a mistake is to significantly underestimate the effects of cholera, which killed ~25,000 in two outbreaks in the late 1840s/early 1850s.

Neither is it true to suggest that it's a mistake to continue with a combined sewerage system. The fact that we are cleaner (ie, take more baths/showers) these days means that we don't necessarily need rainfall to flush the sewers, but the first rain run-off needs just as much treatment as normal black water. The main issue is that sewerage treatment works either haven't kept up to date with demand (lots of nimbys not wanting a smelly site near their nice new houses) or the new sewerage works haven't been built with the capacity for containing fluctuations in inflow, because it's cheaper to allow overflow to the rivers and pay the piddling small fines if you ever do get caught than to invest in the proper infrastructure.