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 4821 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.

[IvanV]

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'.

But when it does run cleaner, in periods of persistent rainfall, then it is not so terrible to overflow it into watercourses. And so it no longer becomes as urgent to size the works for the highest peaks of flow, which occur in periods of persistent rainfall, when any flow smoothing mechanism that they have becomes overloaded.

Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the design of sewage works to think that designing the treatment to the nature of the effluent would save you money.

I've read more than one opinion piece suggesting that if you were starting from scratch today, you'd have separate foul and surface. Maybe those opinions were wrong, and needed someone like you to assess the details of the arguments.

[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'.

But when it does run cleaner, in periods of persistent rainfall, then it is not so terrible to overflow it into watercourses. And so it no longer becomes as urgent to size the works for the highest peaks of flow, which occur in periods of persistent rainfall, when any flow smoothing mechanism that they have becomes overloaded.

Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the design of sewage works to think that designing the treatment to the nature of the effluent would save you money.

I've read more than one opinion piece suggesting that if you were starting from scratch today, you'd have separate foul and surface. Maybe those opinions were wrong, and needed someone like you to assess the details of the arguments.

The engineer wants to design to the worst case, the manager to the cheapest; I'll let you guess who usually wins that argument!

Plenty of places have separate household and surface drains systems, and you'll see many places by rivers/coasts where water run-off does go directly into the environment. Here in Perth and other cities (Australian cities tend to be coastal) there are signs reminding you "Clean drains, clean river" in an effort not to litter as the drains near the river go directly into the river. The first rain we get after long hot dry spells (this is Australia!) results in the river getting quite polluted.

So places near a large body of water (mainly coastal or large river systems) can have separate systems, but if your river is ~100 miles inland and you send your drains directly into it, the river has to cope with that pollution for 100 miles, plus pollution from any other places emptying into it, and have to consider the effect of that on downstream locations. Therefore, non-coastal locations will tend to treat surface drain water.

If you think that having separate treatment systems for higher contaminated, daily cycle loads of household waste and variable-contaminated highly varying loads of surface drains is going to be cheaper, then I welcome you to join management (just not one of any company I work for!)

[jimbob]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001yxl7
This week's Inside Science

Is treated sewage worse for the environment than raw?
BBC Inside Science

There has been increasing public outrage at raw sewage discharges into our rivers and seas, but new research at Lake Windermere suggests that treated sewage is as much to blame. Wastewater experts Simon Evans and Ali Morse get into the nitty gritty of sewage treatment and why it might be causing so many problems.

Last week, the Sumatran orangutan Rakus made headlines when he was spotted by researchers treating a wound with a medicinal plant. A first for a wild animal. But he’s not the only animal to show self-medicating behaviour. Biologist and author of Wild Health, Cindy Engel, talks healing in the wild and what we can learn from the animals that do it.

And it’s that time of year again: the Eurovision Song Contest. In fact, this year marks the 50th Anniversary since ABBA won the 1974 contest with the iconic track Waterloo. Psychology and behavioural researcher Harry Witchel tells us what gives songs at Eurovision a winning edge and tries to predict a winner based on his criteria.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton
Producers: Hannah Robins, Ella Hubber, Sophie Ormiston
Researcher: Caitlin Kennedy
Editor: Martin Smith
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

Show less

Available now

30 minutes

Many sewerage treatment plants don't strip phosphorus so the waste water is still high in nutrients

[bjn]

So that’s a misleading question. “Is the partially treated sewage we have today worse than raw?” seems like a better framing.

[dyqik]

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'.

But when it does run cleaner, in periods of persistent rainfall, then it is not so terrible to overflow it into watercourses. And so it no longer becomes as urgent to size the works for the highest peaks of flow, which occur in periods of persistent rainfall, when any flow smoothing mechanism that they have becomes overloaded.

Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the design of sewage works to think that designing the treatment to the nature of the effluent would save you money.

I've read more than one opinion piece suggesting that if you were starting from scratch today, you'd have separate foul and surface. Maybe those opinions were wrong, and needed someone like you to assess the details of the arguments.

The engineer wants to design to the worst case, the manager to the cheapest; I'll let you guess who usually wins that argument!

Plenty of places have separate household and surface drains systems, and you'll see many places by rivers/coasts where water run-off does go directly into the environment. Here in Perth and other cities (Australian cities tend to be coastal) there are signs reminding you "Clean drains, clean river" in an effort not to litter as the drains near the river go directly into the river. The first rain we get after long hot dry spells (this is Australia!) results in the river getting quite polluted.

So places near a large body of water (mainly coastal or large river systems) can have separate systems, but if your river is ~100 miles inland and you send your drains directly into it, the river has to cope with that pollution for 100 miles, plus pollution from any other places emptying into it, and have to consider the effect of that on downstream locations. Therefore, non-coastal locations will tend to treat surface drain water.

If you think that having separate treatment systems for higher contaminated, daily cycle loads of household waste and variable-contaminated highly varying loads of surface drains is going to be cheaper, then I welcome you to join management (just not one of any company I work for!)

In Greater Boston, there's been a big and expensive effort to separate the storm and sewer drains over the past 10-20 years - with city streets being dug 10 foot deep to install 4-5 ft diameter storm drains.

So there must be a value in it here. I'll note that our precipitation is pretty constant year round, but it's very episodic in both summer (thunderstorms) and winter (snow storms with the water melting all in one go). Winter tends to bring road salt with the meltwater. Meanwhile, sewage goes to big digesters on an island in the harbor for processing. And there's a song about when sewage used to go straight into the environment.

[jimbob]

So that’s a misleading question. “Is the partially treated sewage we have today worse than raw?” seems like a better framing.

Yup.

Or "are we misclassifying our sewerage as treated for our regulations?"

[IvanV]

If you think that having separate treatment systems for higher contaminated, daily cycle loads of household waste and variable-contaminated highly varying loads of surface drains is going to be cheaper, then I welcome you to join management (just not one of any company I work for!)

I was not suggesting that surface drainage go direct to watercourse, rather that the overflow during high flow periods would go to watercourse.

The issue we have in many places in Britain is the sizing of holding tanks which smooth the flow into the sewage works. Because that's a cheaper solution than increasing the processing capacity of the works. To save money, Ofwat is only allowing expenditure for holding tanks large enough so that there are still overflows quite often per year. So that means that a consistent amount of foul sewage is going to watercourse. That several times per year overflow would be more benign if the overflow was from a separate surface drainage sewer.

[Martin_B]

If you think that having separate treatment systems for higher contaminated, daily cycle loads of household waste and variable-contaminated highly varying loads of surface drains is going to be cheaper, then I welcome you to join management (just not one of any company I work for!)

I was not suggesting that surface drainage go direct to watercourse, rather that the overflow during high flow periods would go to watercourse.

The issue we have in many places in Britain is the sizing of holding tanks which smooth the flow into the sewage works. Because that's a cheaper solution than increasing the processing capacity of the works. To save money, Ofwat is only allowing expenditure for holding tanks large enough so that there are still overflows quite often per year. So that means that a consistent amount of foul sewage is going to watercourse. That several times per year overflow would be more benign if the overflow was from a separate surface drainage sewer.

I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous answer:

The engineer wants to design to the worst case, the manager to the cheapest; I'll let you guess who usually wins that argument!

[IvanV]

If you think that having separate treatment systems for higher contaminated, daily cycle loads of household waste and variable-contaminated highly varying loads of surface drains is going to be cheaper, then I welcome you to join management (just not one of any company I work for!)

I was not suggesting that surface drainage go direct to watercourse, rather that the overflow during high flow periods would go to watercourse.

The issue we have in many places in Britain is the sizing of holding tanks which smooth the flow into the sewage works. Because that's a cheaper solution than increasing the processing capacity of the works. To save money, Ofwat is only allowing expenditure for holding tanks large enough so that there are still overflows quite often per year. So that means that a consistent amount of foul sewage is going to watercourse. That several times per year overflow would be more benign if the overflow was from a separate surface drainage sewer.

I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous answer:

The engineer wants to design to the worst case, the manager to the cheapest; I'll let you guess who usually wins that argument!

And in the real world where budgets are not unlimited, what is the most effective way of spending the money that is available?

[bjn]

Risk analysis?

[shpalman]

If you think that having separate treatment systems for higher contaminated, daily cycle loads of household waste and variable-contaminated highly varying loads of surface drains is going to be cheaper, then I welcome you to join management (just not one of any company I work for!)

I was not suggesting that surface drainage go direct to watercourse, rather that the overflow during high flow periods would go to watercourse.

The issue we have in many places in Britain is the sizing of holding tanks which smooth the flow into the sewage works. Because that's a cheaper solution than increasing the processing capacity of the works. To save money, Ofwat is only allowing expenditure for holding tanks large enough so that there are still overflows quite often per year. So that means that a consistent amount of foul sewage is going to watercourse. That several times per year overflow would be more benign if the overflow was from a separate surface drainage sewer.

I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous answer:

The engineer wants to design to the worst case, the manager to the cheapest; I'll let you guess who usually wins that argument!

This is why we're supposed to be fining them for when they let sh.t get into rivers, so that the "cheap" solution ends up not being so cheap in the end, and it instead becomes cost-effective to do it properly.

[jimbob]

I was not suggesting that surface drainage go direct to watercourse, rather that the overflow during high flow periods would go to watercourse.

The issue we have in many places in Britain is the sizing of holding tanks which smooth the flow into the sewage works. Because that's a cheaper solution than increasing the processing capacity of the works. To save money, Ofwat is only allowing expenditure for holding tanks large enough so that there are still overflows quite often per year. So that means that a consistent amount of foul sewage is going to watercourse. That several times per year overflow would be more benign if the overflow was from a separate surface drainage sewer.

I refer the honourable gentleman to my previous answer:

The engineer wants to design to the worst case, the manager to the cheapest; I'll let you guess who usually wins that argument!

This is why we're supposed to be fining them for when they let sh.t get into rivers, so that the "cheap" solution ends up not being so cheap in the end, and it instead becomes cost-effective to do it properly.

And why those in charge of taking the cheap decisions that lead to their company breaking the law should be personally liable including criminally if appropriate.

[tenchboy]

Estimated million tonnes of sewage pumped into sea

More than one million tonnes of raw sewage is estimated to have been released from a pumping station into the North Sea in 2023.

Northumbrian Water produced the estimate of how much sewage was released from its Whitburn site after a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from South Tyneside resident Steve Lavelle.

In response to the latest FoI figure, Northumbrian Water said: "We have the best environmental record of any water company in England, with no serious pollution incidents throughout the whole of 2023, or any since 2021.

I don't know what that is in terms of football pitches but one million per year >~3 000 per day: 3 000 jewson bags per day.
I visualize that as
Lined up on a beach 1 yard deep, 100 yards long and 30 yards wide and bulldozed into the sea, every day.

[Martin_B]

Estimated million tonnes of sewage pumped into sea

More than one million tonnes of raw sewage is estimated to have been released from a pumping station into the North Sea in 2023.

Northumbrian Water produced the estimate of how much sewage was released from its Whitburn site after a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from South Tyneside resident Steve Lavelle.

In response to the latest FoI figure, Northumbrian Water said: "We have the best environmental record of any water company in England, with no serious pollution incidents throughout the whole of 2023, or any since 2021.

I don't know what that is in terms of football pitches but one million per year >~3 000 per day: 3 000 jewson bags per day.
I visualize that as
Lined up on a beach 1 yard deep, 100 yards long and 30 yards wide and bulldozed into the sea, every day.

To be fair to Northumbrian Water (I feel dirty typing that!) it won't be a million tonnes of solid sewage; it'll be a million tonnes of water containing sewage with about 1-5% solids. So still up to 30-150 tonnes of solid waste a day, but not 3000 tonnes a day.

[tenchboy]

Estimated million tonnes of sewage pumped into sea

More than one million tonnes of raw sewage is estimated to have been released from a pumping station into the North Sea in 2023.

Northumbrian Water produced the estimate of how much sewage was released from its Whitburn site after a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from South Tyneside resident Steve Lavelle.

In response to the latest FoI figure, Northumbrian Water said: "We have the best environmental record of any water company in England, with no serious pollution incidents throughout the whole of 2023, or any since 2021.

I don't know what that is in terms of football pitches but one million per year >~3 000 per day: 3 000 jewson bags per day.
I visualize that as
Lined up on a beach 1 yard deep, 100 yards long and 30 yards wide and bulldozed into the sea, every day.

To be fair to Northumbrian Water (I feel dirty typing that!) it won't be a million tonnes of solid sewage; it'll be a million tonnes of water containing sewage with about 1-5% solids. So still up to 30-150 tonnes of solid waste a day, but not 3000 tonnes a day.

I know

[IvanV]

Estimated million tonnes of sewage pumped into sea

More than one million tonnes of raw sewage is estimated to have been released from a pumping station into the North Sea in 2023.

Northumbrian Water produced the estimate of how much sewage was released from its Whitburn site after a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from South Tyneside resident Steve Lavelle.

In response to the latest FoI figure, Northumbrian Water said: "We have the best environmental record of any water company in England, with no serious pollution incidents throughout the whole of 2023, or any since 2021.

I don't know what that is in terms of football pitches but one million per year >~3 000 per day: 3 000 jewson bags per day.
I visualize that as
Lined up on a beach 1 yard deep, 100 yards long and 30 yards wide and bulldozed into the sea, every day.

To be fair to Northumbrian Water (I feel dirty typing that!) it won't be a million tonnes of solid sewage; it'll be a million tonnes of water containing sewage with about 1-5% solids. So still up to 30-150 tonnes of solid waste a day, but not 3000 tonnes a day.

And apparently that doesn't count as a "serious pollution incident". Is that because it is not an incident, but long-term on-going situation?

I particularly feel no compunction about being particularly fair to Northumbrian Water. Sorry, if you've read this before, it's a tale I often tell. When I did a year at Ofwat in 1990-91, when it was still very new, Northumberland Water's shareholders tried to pinch the "green dowry" that the government had plumped up their balance sheet with, both to try and make the company more saleable, and to avoid needing a very large one-off increase in water charges, rather the large increase could be phased in. This is because the investment outgoings of water companies would have to increase very rapidly to comply with EU water quality standards, especially in relation to discharges, and the cash flow implications of that could be hard to survive if the balance sheet wasn't strong enough. Some of the always-private statutory water companies, that did not get any such dowry, did have to make enormous one-off price increases, but as that was in some relatively small areas the government ignored the outrage that came from places such as Eastbourne, which iirc had some huge one-off price increase.

So Northumbrian Water dividended up the dowry to its holding company where the shareholders could get their hands on it. We went to visit them. "Normal commercial practice," they said, you don't leave piles of money down in subsidiary companies. And "green dowry", though much mentioned in the press, was just talk. It was just money in their balance sheet that had no special status, there were no rules about it. We pointed out to them that their structure and situation was not a normal commercial situation, and that money was needed by the (insufficiently) ring-fenced statutory undertaker, to comply with its legal obligations. The positive outcome was that Ofwat rapidly brought in much stricter financial ring-fencing. That meant that the rest of the water industry put Northumbrian on the Naughty Step for having brought the loophole so obviously to Ofwat's attention. Because they'd intended to do the same thing, but a bit more slowly and less obviously. We observed various money movements in various companies being reversed as we dealt with it. Though the loophole was not completely filled, and water company shareholders have since come up with harder-to-prevent methods of pinching the money the needed by the statutory undertakers to comply with their legal obligations.

[tenchboy]

I didn't notice it so widely reported at the time but it seems that the protesters who invaded Sunak's Lake t'other day dropped in a fake choddy before leaving.
They were of course arrested immediately*.
The Irony is lost on the D.Mail & D.Telegraph who were disgusted by a single Mersey Trout in a private Lake but seem to accept shoals of the same in public rivers because shareholders and profits.

Screenshot 2024-06-28 082542.png (217.01 KiB) Viewed 3167 times

*yeah yeah, other reasons too.

[jimbob]

Interesting resource but which has some problems on my phone.

Can't zoom the map by pinching, just double tapping

https://watershedinvestigations.com/map ... -or-coast/

[Opti]

Henley Regatta may be a bit of a shitshow this year.