Lynn’s Review
Science at Fishbourne, saw four representatives from Southern Water at this month’s meeting. Perhaps they were keen to keep good relations with us and with people generally. We have always welcomed representatives from Southern water and continue to be keen to discover new methods for dealing with waste water.
Keith Herbert has worked in the water industry for 15 years. He is a pathfinder for Southern Water and his talk demonstrated his desire to improve how we deal with waste water.
Combined overflows are one of the biggest problems in dealing with waste water. Much of our waste water pipework consists of combined sewers where sewage and rain run off combine, so creating a problem of fast flow, which the water treatment works can’t cope with.
New house building should be connecting to foul sewers and storm water sewers, but this doesn’t always happen and all ends up in a combined sewer. Added to this: water companies, have a legal obligation to connect properties on approved building projects and so can’t object to pressure on services once planning is approved. The water companies would like to have the right to control what goes into their networks and to stop new building developments from sending storm water to combined sewers.
Keith’s main message was to demonstrate Southern Water’s methods now being employed to deal with storm water: the run off from roads, roofs and other structures.
Source control is needed with infrastructure optimisation. He gave the Appley Pumping station on the Isle of Wight as an example of the difficulties encountered when all waste water goes into combined sewers.
The pumping station at Appley can cope with a maximum flow of 220 litres a second but on New Year’s Day it reached 441 litres a second over 4 days. Capturing that flow would need a storage tank of 114 and half cubic meters. This would take a month to empty. It isn’t a feasible idea.
It’s also worth noting that a cubic litre of water weighs a ton.
Appley is an interesting case, for in 2021, a sinkhole was discovered on the path along the beach there, and ten meters down the main sewage pipe, which takes waste water from 27000 houses, and leads to the Appley pumping station, had collapsed. This led to major repairs costing over £2.5 million.)
Keith detailed some of the methods being deployed to deal with storm water:
Sewer level monitors are installed to find blockages in combined sewers. These can determine the vulnerability for each area and prioritise the process to tackle problems with these 5 steps:
Optimise the infrastructure
Treat as much as can be treated
Pump as much as can be pumped
Better communication between sites
Use storage where possible
Encourage the use of storm butts on houses. Taking excess water from roofs will reduce the flow of water into combined sewers.
Introduce planters as a temporary solution, where there are buildings with a large roof area.
Call for permeable paving. Tree planting and water gardens.
Southern Water are paying the residents of Binstead near Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, to replace their impermeable paved and concrete driveways and yards with permeable alternatives such as gravel and cobblestones and Keith mentioned this as a demonstration of how Southern water are now working with private organisations and City Projects to find solutions.
I found this, about the project, on Southern Water’s web pages: “Southern Water has had to activate its Binstead storm overflow up to 20 times a year to prevent further flooding of homes and businesses when sewers have become overloaded with surface water. The de-paving scheme is also intended to reduce reliance on storm overflows.
Almost 250 sqm of impermeable surfaces have been removed so far in Binstead since the pilot launched six months ago, with residents offered up to £75 per sqm replaced. If 10mm of rain were to fall on that area in one downpour, it would create nearly 2.5 tonnes of surface water, which would run into our network. This water will now be absorbed into the environment instead.
Southern Water plans to use data gathered from the scheme to inform a wider roll-out across the South East, with the aim of replacing around 4,000 non-permeable driveways and more than 1,100 hectares of hard surfaces over the next five years to reduce storm overflows and associated flooding.”
Southern Water have also given free water butts to houses in Gurnard on the Isle of Wight and by doing so, have stopped around 20 spills of foul water.
Keith mentioned that optimisation reflects government permits, and maybe public voice should continue to be given to ensure improvement. Polluted seas and water ways have had a spotlight in the media recently, and protests have occurred. Keith encourages a continued conversation and awareness amongst people in order to bring about improvement and changes in the law.
He asks us to look at Schedule 3 of the Flood Water Management Act and to pressurise our new MPs.
I may have missed many facts in my review, but I have plenty of interesting links below. Water quality and pollution is of huge concern and it’s important to continue to work towards the correct legislation by voicing concerns to MPs.
I still have the newspaper clipping of my mother, holding up a bottle of sea water, sitting beside the sea at East Wittering in 1989 (the year of privatisation).
Part of the text in the article reads:
“Mrs Marjorie Morgan, who has been swimming in the same stretch of sea for 47 years, claims it has never been so polluted.” And ”Earlier this year it was revealed that for the first time the beach at Selsey failed E.E.C. bathing water regulations.”
I found this information in an article in the financial times on August 13th 2023 (I also placed a link to it:
“Water was privatised in 1989 with no debt, and a handout of £1.5bn for improvements.” (but maybe it was privatised as costs for improvement were growing?)
By March 2022 water companies had borrowed £60bn and paid out more than £70bn in dividends.” Also:
“Spending on infrastructure, including pipes, has fallen from £3bn in the 1990s to £2.7bn in the 2020s, even though population has increased by 16% in the last two decades.”
Keith recommended that we keep up pressure by reporting any incidents of pollution to the Environment Agency. Since the meeting, I have downloaded the Surfers against Sewage maps and have already received 3 alerts for sewage discharges at Pagham and into Langstone harbour. I have written to my MP and to Southern Water. I also sent photos of suspect deposits on the beach near me. I wrote to the Environmental Agency.
I thought it worth posting my reply from them and I leave you with that.
Happy Summer days to you all:
From: Incident Communication Service <incident_communication_service@environment-agency.gov.uk> Date: Thu, Aug 22, 9:24 PM
Hello,
Thank you for your email regarding the beach pollution incident.
The information you provided has been logged onto our system. We combine this incident information with other data. This helps us to assess how serious the incident could be. Some of the factors that determine how we manage the incident are:
- scale of the harm to the environment or people
- duration
- number of times it has occurred
If you know the source of the pollution then you may want to inform those responsible. They can then take action to stop it. Regulated sites should have procedures for dealing with these reports, for example a water company.
Responding to environmental incidents
For environmental incidents, the Environment Agency:
- need to prioritise their activities on incidents that cause serious and significant risk
- are unable to respond to every environmental incident reported to them
- may in some cases, after assessing the risk, decide that no further action will be taken
- will use the information provided to build a picture of environmental threats - to enable targeted compliance, regulation, and enforcement
- will continue to regulate activities with an environmental permit so they can prevent damage to the environment
- will not provide feedback to individual reports of environmental incidents
If the incident you have reported to us worsens or continues for several days, call the Environment Agency again on 0800 80 70 60.
Kind regards,
Jamal
Here Follow some Interesting Links:
https://www.sas.org.uk/water-quality/sewage-pollution-alerts/
https://investors.southernwater.co.uk/help-advice/works-or-issues-in-my-area
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/30/part/5/crossheading/storm-overflows/enacted
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9617/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/storm-overflow-target-to-be-enshrined-in-law
https://www.ft.com/content/e298ca8d-ab02-4e1a-bae1-452004905cc6