UKH

Surprised to see no mention of this already as it seems to be an  issue that’s filtered through to the general public. I’ve posted this in Off Belay as it’s not really a party political issue but an environmental and public health one.

My questions are: 

Is it really as simple as water companies releasing raw sewage into our waterways or is it relatively benign, mostly treated, waste?

Are there (more expensive) alternatives or is this the only option without the required chemicals?

The amendment that was voted down got a lot of coverage but it’s not clear what the underlying legislation was for and why it was required, was it precipitated by the shortages or part of some long term policy. 
Thank you 

Firstly, "sewerage" is the infrastructure, sewage is the poo filled water.....

Secondly......

Yes, it is raw sewage, inc. baby wipes, sanitary towels etc. Pretty grim. 

I'm not sure your exact point but this issue is not solely down to lack of chemicals or brexit but chronic underfunding of infrastructure.

Within water quality/environmental circles this has been a hot topic for a LONG time and the Environment Bill was the opportunity to get some legislation so stop the water companies dumping the raw sewage. This opportunity was not taken (more monitoring, no action)and the Lords took it upon them selves to add an amendment, the essence of which was:

and is detailed here on P.6:

https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/43109/documents/802

All it was asking was instead of the persistent status quo, in which water companies dump raw sewage into our seas and rivers under the excuses of "Victorian infrastructure" and "it's a bit rainy*" they actually invest in improving the sewerage demonstrably so they they can reduce the number of direct overflows.

*I am leaving the aside the fact these "storm overflows" don't always coincide with wither heavy rain and high water tables......

The changes to the environment bill wanted to accelerate the removal of combined sewage CSO's overflows and prevent companies using "Extreme Rainfall events" as a method of allowing untreated sewage to be released into the environment with very little treatment.

Water companies were granted a dispensation a few months back incase chemical stocks ran out in the UK so they didn't have to meet higher standards of compliance for things like phosphate removal.

It would seem to me the government did not want to force the removal of CSOs on the grounds of significant cost, it would be a hefty sum to fork out in order to separate rainfall runoff drainage from the sewer network all over England.

But investments back into both clean and wastewater infrastructure in the UK are starting to lag behind the degradation of current assets making it harder to meet current standards and demands nevermind tighter regulation and OFWAT seems to no fully understand the state most companies find themselves in and focuses too much on clean water leakage as it sounds good to consumers while being a very ineffective use of customers money.

Is there anyway to breakdown the releases during high water and releases for other reasons?

I can't see how releases during high water can be avoided with current combined sewers

On the other hand releases due to other reasons are much less defensible from my limited understanding 

Thanks, so we are already dumping (an increasing amount?) of raw sewage and the environmental bill does not change that for the better or worse? 
 

Well, just up river from me, the Duffield works used the storm overflow for over 8000 hours in a year (over 330 days). I don't remember it being that wet last year. 

https://www.itv.com/news/central/2021-04-01/severn-trent-water-64-years-wor...

I'm not sure. The rivers trust do a good map showing the location of the sewage discharges:

https://www.theriverstrust.org/key-issues/sewage-in-rivers

which shows that into the River Mersey near me, they discharged sewage on 180 separate in 2020 occasions which to me, seems quite a lot. It was over spilling for 523hrs in 2020. I've seen the pipe open and spill before, it's a circa 1m bore pipe and it's quite a flow. 

There have been plenty of schemes planned but never implemented since the 90s to improve upstream SSOs including storage and screens etc. It is neither easy nor cheap but the water companies throwing their hands up now is a bit rich imho.

I would say even less defensible.....

We are dumping a lot. Water companies currently have dispensation on standards compliance due to chemical shortages. The environment bill calls for more monitoring (not all discharges are monitored so the Rivers Trust map and figures are an underestimate) which will lead to more fines for the Water Companies, however, having seen the shareholder return on water companies at the moment, fines seems to make little impact on their profitability.

The amendment was intended to force the water companies hand to actually invest in infrastructure improvement.

(There is the added concern that infrastructure investment currently is not even enough to maintain what we have already but that is outside of the scope of the Environment bill)

Just upstream from me on the Thames (immediately south of Oxford) there's an outlet into which Thames Water are allowed to discharge 'in extreme circumstances'.

These extreme circumstances happen about once a week.

Yup

What is the cause of chemical shortages? 

Brexit and a chemical manufacturer in the UK went into administration recently. 

Ah, another sunlit uplands benefit. Literally Brexshit... Britannia rules the waves, so we can dump raw sewage into them. Hoorah!

The recent administration doesn't explain the 330 days overspill in the last year reported above; this problem has clearly been ongoing for a considerable time.

It's a really tricky issue and I do sometimes think water companies pick up bad press as they are easy to see.  As an alternate perspective:

There are a lot of pressure on the system and finite budgets, which leads to trade offs between the looking after the environment and flooding peoples houses. Remember - the environment won't be phoning you up swearing/crying at 2AM, nor writing to your boss, your MP nor your regulator so flooding generally gets priority. Who speaks up for the environment - especially if it's in a harder to access location? Successive governments have decimated the regulators (EA/NRW) and watered down legislation , meaning enforcement is minimal.

At the same, society itself has a lot to answer for.  When you are looking at cost versus benefit of investment - there is little drive to implement schemes.  Customer "Willingness to Pay" is regularly questioned - when you ask if customers are will to put £x more on there bill to prevent pollution then answer is often no.  Companies charging is regulated by OFWAT, as a straw poll - who's water bills have gone up at the same rate as say gas/electricity bills?  I know it's not quite the same, but climate projections are for 30% increases in peak storm flows by 2050 but bills are being driven down or kept on hold for political reasons given the inability to have a free market economy in the water sector (people in London can only have Thames Water). 

I saw the mention of wet wipes above - at the end of the day - shit like that shouldn't be in a sewer in the first place. Its a nightmare for screens, pumps and blockages in the system and wastes sooooo much time, all because people can't be arsed to use the bin.

More needs to be done in this area, and we are building up a really big problem for the next 30 years, but try forcing the government to put some teeth in legislation, fund regulators properly and admit we will ALL have to invest in our infrastructure will be needed.   

Be interesting to cost the treatment of 150ltrs waste water which seems to be the industry calculation of waste generated per head per 24hs 

My two local winter surf breaks have sewerage issues. As the beaches are south or east facing they only really work during storm conditions. At exactly the same time, the sewerage system tends not to work.

The sand is red, and with the outfall from Dawlish Water,  and the River Teign, the colour and err, texture of the water is quite unique,  but not in a good way.

Despite the £m spent by SWW the situation never improves and the golden rule when surfing is keep your mouth closed at all times in case of floaters....

I don't swim in the lakes when it rains heavily, was in Coniston once during some rough weather and the water was grim, the accumulated muck washed off the surrounding farmland.

High tarns don't seem to get effected

Interesting yes, difficult - also yes.  Each works is different,  depending on the process type,  topology (How many pump units), receiving waterbody standards,  what's in the network upstream (industry/ residential) , how much infiltration there is and how much rain there is getting in.  That's before you account for how old the network is and how will it was built (third the cost of repairs). 

The 150l/h/d is being driven down alot through more efficient appliances but humans do still poo at the same rate. 120/130 is becoming more of a norm. Still horrifying when I think I use 20l in a van for a weekend for 2!

Difficult to untangle but i think an average cost would be helpful in this conversation, you could then add and subtract processes and specify outcomes against cost.

We could maybe then make better informed decisions 

Maybe we would individually make better decisions re water use

Less spent on dividends and more on infrastructure might help - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-wate...

The benefits of water companies being private seem to accrue to shareholders and directors rather than customers or the environment. I was struct by the quote below -

"Scottish Water, which is publicly owned, has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than the privatised English water companies, according to the analysis. It charges users 14% less and does not pay dividends."

I have to admit to being blissfully unaware that any of this actually went on until relatively recently.  I thought the idea of dumping raw sewage was something that only happened after some sort of catastrophic accident.  But the volumes and frequency I'm reading above is jaw dropping.

Rule Shitannia.

They can build stored overflow systems which take storm flows and "keep" it until the storm is over, which then pump it back into the treatment route after the storm is over.

This isn't just about combined sewers, it happens when sewers aren't combined.

And a loss of chemicals isn't an excuse either, because chemicals are used to remove phosphates, not to prevent untreated sewage going into rivers.

Maybe some sort of public ownership?

I wonder if it's ever been tried.

This type of infrastructure, shouldn't be making a profit for anyone, never mind foreign companies / governments.

I don't believe they can build storage for decent sized floods in the NW of England the way watersheds are currently operating

'Public ownership' - crazy double talk

Who'd have thought a model where profit was reinvested rather than given away to shareholders would be a more efficient way to run public services?

Even more amusing the Brexiters are importing sh*t from the EU to spread on English fields!  

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/02/sewage-sludge-containin...

I can't see how that would work. Where's the incentive for staff to do a great job, once they know the profits of their labour aren't going to already-rich shareholders they've never met?

😉

I've seen this in the news recently and was really surprised it was still an actual problem.  Sewage overflowing into rivers during storms (overflowing, not actually being pumped) was a problem in my town in the 80s and 90s so to sort the problem Anglian water had a 5km tunnel dug under the town 2.4 metres in diameter to act as a massive storage tank. During times of heavy rain the sewers overflow in to this tunnel until it's pumped to the treatment works later. If I remember rightly it has about a 25 million litre capacity, same as 10 Olympic swimming pools and cost £33 million in 1998. As far as I know that was the end of raw sewage entering the local rivers. 

We did something under Bradford (near Valley Parade) in the late 80s. Really expensive. The water is usually released under gravity through a penstock rather than pumped though.

We also renewed a few overflows (which were little more than a hole that the sewage spilled out of) with some vortex arrangement that supposedly diverted the lumpy bits back into the main flow to the works.

It is my understanding that most of the byproduct  ended up on the pitch, resulting in years of underachievement.

Funny, I read "UK" instead of "English" when I looked at the article. You sure that there's none of that shite heading to Scotland Tom?

Social media pressure leasing to mainstream press coverage seems to have worked. 

The amendment (or at least its "intent") is now to be included in the environment bill:

https://twitter.com/Laura_K_Hughes/status/1453039095387758597

Same here. Watching the news last night made me feel a bit queasy.

There is zero, no ZERO, excuse for this. The billions paid in dividends is a disgrace. This is where my politics moves from centre right to centre left. I'm all for a reduced state where efficiency and improvement are introduced by the markets and critical skills are attracted by private ownership (telecoms for instance) but a crucial, essential infrastructure that water is, run without competition as it is, yet where profits are not reinvested wholly in improving the system is a failed endeavour. I know many of us will have money tied up in these companies through our pensions and much of the dividends paid will be to institutional investors but imagine this; would you rather be paid an extra few quid this year and have your sewage diverted to the street or would you prefer to have your payments reduced slightly and have your waste properly handled. Investors are good at finding alternatives too so in all liklihood,  it wouldn't make a difference.

I would feel very uneasy about the UK legislating to bring private business into public ownership however I would make an exception in the case of water.

Scottish Water uses PFI for its investment plans ( a cursory glance at the Accounts shows this).  It is not the virtuous circle you imply. 

Still does not solve the problem of what you do in flood situations. 
 

Not a comment on the private/public debate but this only makes a difference if the legislation, enforcement and investment are there.  No reason private couldn't work properly in the right contractual framework.

It obviously doesn't cover every eventuality, major floods are always going to cause problems, but one site has been discharging unthreatened sewage for 330 days!!

And it does work, it was standard practice at a number of plants I've worked on.

and @ John Arran

I know, it's like going back to the 70's or something, a bit like swimming in shit at the seaside. glad they got rid of Corbyn and avoided all of that.

I'm not sure what this virtuous circle is that you say I'm implying?

My point is private water companies (which also have significant debt) make plenty of profit and use the profit to pay dividends to shareholders instead of investing in infrastructure. Public companies don't provide money to shareholders so there is more money to put into infrastructure (or more flexibility to charge their customers less).

My supply is provided by United Utilities, I don't have an option to choose another supplier, there is no competition in this. They made a before tax profit of £505 million on revenues of £1,808 million for the year to March 2021. That's a pretty healthy profit margin! Instead of investing this in infrastructure or reducing bills they provide dividends to investors. I resent having to support this business model for a basic need such as water.

Exactly how these companies borrow to invest or not is irrelevant to my point. It's not like the private companies are debt free, United Utilities is servicing £7 billion of debt.

The reason given by the MPs voting against the amendment was that to do something would be "too expensive". Surely using some of that profit to build new sewerage infrastructure to cope with the increased volume is the very definition of "solving the problem" even if that solution is not instant but incremental?

This is not a new problem and stems from thirty years of water companies announcing "it's too expensive to fix" combined with the lack of any effort to deal with drainage and our urban environments being increasingly concreted over. It has now come to a head as since 2019 75% of CSOs are now monitored and the data published by the EA which means campaign groups a) have access to the data and b) can use this data to show how bad the situation is.

It was and the theory was that because it was in storm scenarios, the sewage would be more dilute (due to the rainwater) and the river downstream of the CSO would be higher so that dilute sewage would then be further diluted due to to the high volume in water in the river.

However, due to the chronic underinvestment* over the years, increase demand/volume of human waste and the changing nature of our built environment (more concrete, tarmac, car gardens etc) the CSOs discharge more frequently, and when river levels are lower, meaning a lot more concentrated sewage, more often.

Grim stuff. It's probably been happening for years, it was just that CSO use was self reported by water companies. Now they are monitored, (well, seventy five percent are since 2019) we now know the extent of the issue. There is no quick/easy fix either, but that's to expected when one sits of their hands and claims there's not problem for thirty years.

*to the extent that their is concern that, forgetting infrastructure improvements, the level of investment is too low to maintain the existing infrastructure.

I think people also  need to look at home first. You only have to look at the fatbergs etc to understand that it is both the utilities and the public that have problems as anothe poster has alluded

I would look at the regulations first as ultimately the water utilities have to follow what the regulatory body says that they must invest. It is why there is the current fuss.Its as much a regulatory issue as a finance issue.

That operating profit will also be used to invest as well as pay a dividend.Its better than having a £10 million operating profit .

And if they were public sector, they still have to borrow ( using PFI).

Its not pretty either way for investing. Big money. But there have been some improvement take the  huge Thames Tunnel.

Its a big environemental/climate change issue becuase of floodrisk and also house building etc.Maybe we shud be banning wet wipes as well.

UU is a publicly listed company on the stock exchange and not owned by an asset management company like most of the others, the employees own a fair chunk of that and its probably one of the best performing companies out of the bigger ones out there. All pricing, investment and profits taken are agreed by OFWAT through the price review and AMP processes. Not sure having "competition" in such a market is going to do anyone any favours, just look at the state of the energy industry for reinvestment and pricing.

Do any of these water companies donate directly, or indirectly, to the conservative party perchance?

I chose UU just because it's my local water company but the publicly listed UK water companies are largely owned by foreign investment companies. Money flows from customers(us!) to overseas investors. See https://corporatewatch.org/who-owns-your-water-and-how-theyll-try-to-keep-i...

The reason I mention competition is that private companies benefit to consumers is that they are in competition so they must provide a cost effective service because if it's not cost effective you can move elsewhere. Water companies have no such competitive pressure and nor are they investing in the public good such as infrastructure work which would benefit the environment. 

I've not explicitly said but I thought it was clear, I would rather a natural monopoly such as water was publicly owned rather than owned by private investors.

Thanks for the link. The overflow just upstream of where I live had sewage discharge events 81 times in 2020. My daughter and I play in that river, I've seen people fishing and swimming in the river, I had no idea about the sewage discharge.

Thats all well and good , but where does the investment come from?£150 billion is what they reckon to upgrade the sewerage .Does that come from the NHS captial  budget or what?

In a way its off loading the issue onto the private sector and regulating it so that it invests.

Its not an easy one to address.I would agree it would be better public sector, but there again that is also fraught with finance difficulties.

Most are not publicly listed they are owned privately by asset management companies. So they have been taken off the stock exchange and you and I are unable to buy shares in them.The current water company I work at is the same, as was my previous employer.

I wouldn't mind being switched to a non-profit model at work but personally I don't think the current regulators have been that concerned with the reinvestment issues companies are facing. Probably because the majority of the people that set the direction for the EA and OFWAT don't really know what's involved with producing drinking water and treating sewage at an operational level. 

I don't know how to make this more clear.  More of the money that is currently being used to pay dividends should be spent on infrastructure. 

Thanks, it's interesting that we can't even benefit by being shareholders!

Then kick the regulator and change the rules.......

Totally agree that's right in principle,  but in practice...

Most you aren't *lucky* enough to live in South West Waters' area of monopoly,  sorry I mean operating area. They devised a wonderful money making scheme lots of years ago called "Clean Sweep". This involved hoisting up all costs and charges massively to pay for coastal area sewerage improvements.

Don't get me wrong, it did make some places better but nothing was fully fixed.  We were lucky enough to pay some of the highest water costs in the country,  but its OK, SWW still managed to make two reasonable dividend payments per year, every year!

And yet, weren't all debts written off when they were initially privatised? If so, the sector has managed both to pay huge dividends and run up huge debts. Neat management, no doubt rewarded with hefty bonuses. 

A. the article is over a year old.

B. it could very well be scottish fields that would be the recipients based on the article.. "but the identity of the recipient in the UK has been redacted".  

That its the EA and not SEPA/Natural Resources Wales implies its England though.

Thanks for that info. Learned something new. 

The issue is that it's unfiltered from the general public.

Well, don't then. but I'm telling you it happens now, ( in some areas and/or treatment plants)  it doesn't cover every instance obviously, what it does do is give the system some time to react, without discharging into the waterways.

What it also does is give the lumps time to settle and the cleaner diluted sewage is the stuff that gets leaked out. When the storm abates the remaining heavier items are treated along with the normal incoming flow.

Jesus wept.

https://twitter.com/Abijunwin/status/1453256325807448073

One thing that could reduce the amount of rainwater is how water companies bill Forf dealing with surface drainage so that 'tarmac-ing' areas of garden attracts a higher cost unless there is a soakaway of some sort.

Also local councils should not be granting planning applications where developers don't have mitigation for the surface water drainage.  There has been a lot of building in my local area of Kent (whitstable/faversham) and I doubt there has been any thought given to this. In Whitstable a development has been started on 40 -50 acre site on a hill which drains into a short stream that flows into the sea. The water from those former fields will now be going into Southern Water's sewerage.  Great..

In the north of England, at least, surface and foul water have been separated on new developments for about the last forty years or so. Though on brown field sites they often then both connect to the combined sewer. Doh. All new developments have had attenuation systems to reduce run off peaks for the last fifteen years . Surprising if this is not the situation in the south.

The basic principal is that any alterations reduce rather than increase the flooding risk.

That's the theory....

This appears to be a video of a river. I can't see any sewage pollution there. That's not to say it isn't present, but it doesn't appear evident from the video.

Yup North Devon beaches benefited greatly from this. When I were a lad the pipeline off the beach at woolacombe used to regularly turn the water into a foaming thick froth. The pipe isn't even there any more as far as I can see. Unfortunately I don't live there to reap the benefits these days. South Devon beaches were always the poor relations when it came to this improvement.

The person who took the video said it was sewage turning the water brown, she was standing next to it so she probably knows.

In this video (different river) you can see the sewage outflow and the bit of the river with the sewage looks a lot like the river in the first video.

https://twitter.com/Jamie_Woodward_/status/1453630060095737858

The pipe still be there, it has just been made a little longer. Not visible on the current google satellite view as it was taken at high tide so is submerged but can be seen on streetview here between the two cars: 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.1748966,-4.2120112,3a,19.6y,272.62h,80.77...

So far this month it has only discharged untreated sewage to Woolacombe beach on the 5th, the 21st and 28th of October. If that is classed as an improvement I dread to think what it was like in them olden days

The first video shows a brown river. I wouldn't have thought that was completely unexpected on the Avon just a little upstream of the tidal limit. There's a lot of catchment above it and plenty of sources of sediment.

The second thing you've linked to shows a sewage discharge and it appears to be forming a brown plume in the river. That doesn't mean that every time you see the colour brown in a river it means it is being polluted with sewage. When we think of sewage we think of the colour brown (because poo), but sewage is more often a murky grey colour.

The person who took the video was obviously standing next to it which means they are in a pretty good position to judge if it is sewage.

Longer pipe, great.

They did build a lovely new treatment works near Dawlish and the huge brown smear in the sea where it all flows out was much smaller than it had been and the smell was better.

However,  since then I bet 3000 new homes have been built. Was the treatment works sized for that? Doubt it, and the huge sums SWW charge the housebuilders went straight to profit and dividend I bet.

Standing next to a river doesn't mean that you necessarily understand what you're looking at. For example, people very often mistake surface foam for pollution. Given that the water company have stated their overflows weren't discharging it seems very unlikely indeed that this video shows sewage pollution.

As the original poster of the video said, it stinks.

If it smells of sh!t, it probably is sh!t.

That’s the Avon at Conham, it’s *always* brown...

A good example of a brown river is the Usk in S Wales, every time it rains a lot. It's not sewage that causes that, it's soil entering the water for various reasons. Just because it's brown doesn't mean it's sewage. For a river to be brown purely because of sewage would be exceptional. 

We have quite a few properties here still on cesspits instead of main drain and the lorries that empty them have a large bore sight tube on the back so they know when they're getting full. The liquid in them is nearly always 'grey water' colour. Also, I've seen hundreds of tonnes of sewage overflowing onto the beach due to a pump failure and it too wasn't brown. The average family produces what, a couple of kilos of turds a day, along with ~2-400 hundred of litres of water. Sewage simply isn't going to be brown, but it is going to be foamy and have floaters & 'dead mice' in it.

OK, I obviously have no local knowledge but if you look at the full thread:

a. the water company would get fined if they admitted they were polluting

b. the woman who posted the video was a local and she says this was different from normal

c. she said it stank next to a sewage outfall pipe.  If it looks like shit and smells like shit it probably is shit

d. a local club that swims in the river were getting weekly water quality tests done and the one for that week was the worst they had seen.  If the lab says there's shit in the river there's probably shit in the river.

https://twitter.com/Conham_bathing

I also have no local knowledge. I was just challenging what I perceived to be a somewhat febrile post that you'd made where you linked to a video of a normal looking river with the caption "Jesus wept".

To pick up on the assertion that the company is lying about whether its storm overflows were discharging - this makes no sense at all. Companies report their overflow data to the EA annually. If they didn't then we wouldn't have these figures that we see reported in the press about how often CSOs discharge. If CSOs were discharging, why would they take such a big risk to doctor data pertaining to an event which had no observable impact on the river or its ecology? It makes no sense.

If the company is corrupt and prepared to falsify information then why don't they also alter the sample results taken at Conham - the volunteers send their labs to Wessex Water's own lab for analysis.

Again, I've no idea what is upstream of Conham but it's worth remembering that bacterial pollution in rivers is not just a function of whether CSOs discharged but also dependent on heaps of other factors: agricultural pollution, misconnections, cloud cover etc. I'd guess turbid water would also contribute to high bacteria levels.