Sewerage dumped in rivers

Foxhollow

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Actually they do, on the bigger schemes at least.

Several very large developments are being proposed around here (2000+) and the promoters have had to show whether Thames Water have the capacity to accept their waste. In one case (Harlow North) the cost of upgrade is so high that the developer proposes to build a new sewage works on site serving the development. The other (Birchall Garden Suburb) has to contribute to an upgrade at Rye Meads Sewage Works before they can begin.

Drinking water, on the other hand... :banghead: I raised the issue at the local plan examination that Affinity Water would struggle to supply the extra 16000 houses proposed in our district (plus the 24000 in neighbouring East Herts plus the many 1000's in their supply area in West London) and the Inspector said it was "outside the scope" of the planning system although he agreed it was mad.
Yes I agree on very large developments. But on developments such as less than 200 house/ flats they do not, but in a town where it is easy to have at least 2-5 of these developments a year it would soon mount up.
 

Foxhollow

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
Yes.
Yes.
And yes.
Agreed.
We have to be careful when talking profits and dividends. It is only from profits that capital schemes (improvement/ heavy maintenance/ expansion) can be funded also you need to pay dividends to attract investors. Too many people see profits and paying dividends as dirty terms. If you have no profits and do not pay dividends there would be no company to grow. Also lets us not forget it is the shareholders who take a risk by investing into the company. If the company does not make profits or goes bust it is them that lose. So it is always a fine line to balance profit/ dividends/ investment. Yes in the early days of the privatisation there was some high dividends paid but at that time it was also a very risky investment so the risk reward equation was the issue. The industry is now mature and the risk profile for an investment in a water company is more understood so investment and finance in these companies is too a degree less risky. But the amount that can come from customers if fixed by OFWAT so there is still a risk that the revenue could be substantially inadequate for profits for reinvestment. Then we get into financing and making companies untenable.

We always see foreign investment as a bad thing but if no company in this country is prepared to invest why do we have a go at foreign investors. There is nothing stopping UK based investors but they wish not to invest.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
We have to be careful when talking profits and dividends. It is only from profits that capital schemes (improvement/ heavy maintenance/ expansion) can be funded also you need to pay dividends to attract investors. Too many people see profits and paying dividends as dirty terms. If you have no profits and do not pay dividends there would be no company to grow. Also lets us not forget it is the shareholders who take a risk by investing into the company. If the company does not make profits or goes bust it is them that lose. So it is always a fine line to balance profit/ dividends/ investment. Yes in the early days of the privatisation there was some high dividends paid but at that time it was also a very risky investment so the risk reward equation was the issue. The industry is now mature and the risk profile for an investment in a water company is more understood so investment and finance in these companies is too a degree less risky. But the amount that can come from customers if fixed by OFWAT so there is still a risk that the revenue could be substantially inadequate for profits for reinvestment. Then we get into financing and making companies untenable.

We always see foreign investment as a bad thing but if no company in this country is prepared to invest why do we have a go at foreign investors. There is nothing stopping UK based investors but they wish not to invest.
More importantly, if critical infrastructure can be run at a profit by private companies (home OR foreign owned) then why can't it be run in public ownership at a lower net cost?
 

TheTallGuy

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
More importantly, if critical infrastructure can be run at a profit by private companies (home OR foreign owned) then why can't it be run in public ownership at a lower net cost?
Because when it's public owned it becomes a political football, subject to the whims of the treasury and whoever is sitting in number 10... Network Rail is a prime example of this!
 

Foxhollow

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
More importantly, if critical infrastructure can be run at a profit by private companies (home OR foreign owned) then why can't it be run in public ownership at a lower net cost?
It could if the public ownership entity ran it correctly and was able to get the investment from government when required. However as we have seen from the majority of public owned entities it soon becomes a public football and the required investment is not provided. Also it does not want to pay for the proper expertise to run the company, the public entity becomes bloated with too much management and the job does not get done. As we see with entities such as the NHS there is too many levels of management, the money does not go to the actual people wo deliver the service or actual assets to deliver, but just the vast army of paper shufflers/ data collectors.

Also in alot of public entities the senior managers have never run entities where you have to make the numbers work or you go bust. In public entities if you go overbudget there is generally no repercussions, there is no driver to efficient running and giving value for money. Also if you do not deliver the performance what penalties are there.

In this country we do not train our public sector managers as true commercial managers. But we end up giving the senior management of public entities to civil servants who have no technical training in the sector they are managing nor have ever run a commercial business. If you look at the majority or any public entities run in Europe most are managed by people who have come from industry or are professionally qualified in the field as well as have a public service training.
 
Hot off the press today and on Panorama apparently is this...


Water companies have been illegally dumping untreated sewage into rivers in England and Wales, an investigation by BBC Panorama has found.
Data analysed by the programme showed some companies have regularly breached the conditions in their permits.
Treatment works are only allowed to put sewage into waterways after wet weather and when they are close to capacity.


Not news to most of us of course. Not even that they can actually do so legally after wet weather and when they are close to capacity. Why is it I wonder that they can get away with this and have done for ever, even the illegal dumping which is very commonplace and repeated regularly, when farmers who have accidents once in a literal blue moon are hit with swingeing fines and can actually lose a significant chunk of their income as well as being shut down completely by farm assurance? Along with being named and shamed in local and national press. It makes me spit blood! :mad:
I wonder how many major cities around the world near the sea or ocean still discharge raw or only partially treated sewage???🤔
 
major house builders dont upgrade the infrucstructure such as roads electric, water , or sewage, they build houses to make money ?
well well if you have a look around my neck of the woods and the major housebuilding thats going on and will go on thats got planning permission for and the future needs ? the roads they cant cope with the traffic now ? anyone on here going out to hullbridge or burnham, fambridge way the road is just a ordinary country road with no lights ? look at the housing being built and will be built their for starters, i remember in my youth in the late 1960s up to the early 1970s my village had no mains drainage then it was put threw in the mid 1970s, now my areas population at a guess has more than tripled, in my village many houses where there was once one there are now 2 or 3 ? the infrustructure has not kept pace with the growth of population same as the policing has not, in fact we have less police now then when i was a youngster ? work that out ?
Actually they do, on the bigger schemes at least.

Several very large developments are being proposed around here (2000+) and the promoters have had to show whether Thames Water have the capacity to accept their waste. In one case (Harlow North) the cost of upgrade is so high that the developer proposes to build a new sewage works on site serving the development. The other (Birchall Garden Suburb) has to contribute to an upgrade at Rye Meads Sewage Works before they can begin.

Drinking water, on the other hand... :banghead: I raised the issue at the local plan examination that Affinity Water would struggle to supply the extra 16000 houses proposed in our district (plus the 24000 in neighbouring East Herts plus the many 1000's in their supply area in West London) and the Inspector said it was "outside the scope" of the planning system although he agreed it was mad.

it’s easy to blame developers but it’s not really their job to provide the business end of the infrastructure.

big planning applications have all the necessary bodies as consulties who are very good at stating how much it will cost to connect to their services. developers then pay often huge fees to connect. So long as what is promised in the approved plans is built out it’s down the infrastructure bodies to sort themselves out surely?
 

TheTallGuy

Member
Location
Cambridgeshire
it’s easy to blame developers but it’s not really their job to provide the business end of the infrastructure.

big planning applications have all the necessary bodies as consulties who are very good at stating how much it will cost to connect to their services. developers then pay often huge fees to connect. So long as what is promised in the approved plans is built out it’s down the infrastructure bodies to sort themselves out surely?
The problem is that the infrastructure bodies are restricted in terms of what they are able to charge for.
 
As I said earlier, I'd sooner see someone's entire pig or cow lagoon go out to sea during a flood than any sewerage.

The problem you have is that water companies are all privately owned and inherited the network for fudge all. They make sizeable profits and hand it to shareholders. They have no intention of doing major upgrades or repairs to the tune of mega-millions which is what it would need to make any difference to the system. The EA are a load of morons who are too busy counting newts to notice or care either. These fines the courts hand water companies are a joke. 20K to a water company is chickenfeed- these companies make mega-millions per year and that is after they have tried to needle that figure down- check how much each of their directors earn, it will all be in their annual shareholders reports. 20K fine for letting some sewerage go? I bet one of their executive board members could pay that out of his petty cash.
 

honeyend

Member
Perhaps the solution is to have community water treatment tanks, so the water that is discharged in to the drains is pretreated. Our local travellers site has one which must serve twenty homes, there would then be some sort of responsibility and service charge for what you put down in the toilets, no baby wipes and the rest of the waste people can not be bothered to wrap and put in the bin.
I think all new estates should have their own solar panels micro generation systems, and energy storage.
 
Perhaps the solution is to have community water treatment tanks, so the water that is discharged in to the drains is pretreated. Our local travellers site has one which must serve twenty homes, there would then be some sort of responsibility and service charge for what you put down in the toilets, no baby wipes and the rest of the waste people can not be bothered to wrap and put in the bin.
I think all new estates should have their own solar panels micro generation systems, and energy storage.

The thing to do is direct all community sewerage to a local biogas plant and subject it to the AD process. Ideally under a thermophilic regime. Need to stop plastics finding their way into the sewage stream- just ban the fudging things. Paper wipes exist.
 

bluebell

Member
taking a simple view of it all, its all very well the govt coming out with a statment saying we need as a nation to be building a million extra, new homes a year, a year ? my first thought, question would be for who ? then when you get down to where all these houses are, will be built, you get the same old answer well our nation is only 6-8 percent developed and 80-90 percent is undeveloped yes thats true, but houses will only be built were they can be sold and are jobs for the people, so when you take all the factors like jobs, flood plains, mountains etc etc etc it limits where most this development can go?
 

pycoed

Member
I wonder how many major cities around the world near the sea or ocean still discharge raw or only partially treated sewage???🤔
All the sewage from western Cardiff is pumped into the sea via Lavernock point. It is "partially treated" which is an euphemism for screened of larger solids. In fact the screening is done to protect the pumps & is nothing to do with "treatment". All the sewage from the Heads of the Valleys road & all towns along route (including Caerffili) was collected by the Rhmney Valley trunk sewer which entered the sea untreated near Rover Way to the east of Cardiff (some may say it's a pity it didn't discharge into Rover Way, but I couldn't possibly comment ;) )
The same was true of Swansea (outfall in Mumbles!!!) until the treatment plant was built about 20 years back:banghead:
 
All the sewage from western Cardiff is pumped into the sea via Lavernock point. It is "partially treated" which is an euphemism for screened of larger solids. In fact the screening is done to protect the pumps & is nothing to do with "treatment". All the sewage from the Heads of the Valleys road & all towns along route (including Caerffili) was collected by the Rhmney Valley trunk sewer which entered the sea untreated near Rover Way to the east of Cardiff (some may say it's a pity it didn't discharge into Rover Way, but I couldn't possibly comment ;) )
The same was true of Swansea (outfall in Mumbles!!!) until the treatment plant was built about 20 years back:banghead:
Victoria BC, Canada and the state's capital pumped raw sewage into the ocean up to January 2020.....Wellington, NZ or so I've been told pumps raw sewage into Cook Straight....but then like Wellington shite has to go somewhere, eh🙄
 
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Kidds

Member
Horticulture
Actually most local staff do really care. They are struggling in a dysfunction management regime.
No doubt they do at the start but met with such a barrier of inaction and apathy they must inevitably fall to the realisation that feck all will happen. Beating your head against a brick wall is a headache nobody can cope with for long.
I have seen it.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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    Votes: 65 34.8%
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    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

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    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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