Our aims: to raise public awareness about the health hazards & object to the systematic discharging of sewage into the River Thames.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We want to see:

  1. The Upper Thames tideway reclassified as 'controlled waters', rather than 'open water'. At present discharge consents are freely given into 'open water' as it is assumed that such discharges will disperse rapidly. Water flow in the river is frequently very low and sewage discharges can take weeks to exit the river. It should be an offence to discharge any polluting waters into the river.
  2. Introduction of legislation for the segregation of surface water drainage from foul sewage. Surface drainage should be prevented from entering the foul sewers and redirected into rivers, streams and soak-aways, or better still, captured for drinking water (for which the Capital is woefully short). A sensible long-term strategy of building regulations to promote this would reduce the storm load on the sewers and STWs and thus the overall volume of the problem.
  3. DEFRA/EA to enforce a regulatory regime to ensure that the improvements defined in the November water pricing talks with OFWAT are actually made. The three main STWs for London have been non-compliant with the UWWT directive since 1991.

Background

We are campaigning to bring the problems caused by sewage discharge into the River Thames to greater public awareness and pressurise the government and Thames Water to invest in improving London’s sewage and drainage system to help prevent the current abuse of the river as an open sewer. To do this we organise events, this website and petition for support and also provide an information service about the health hazards to river users.

Currently the river suffers regular discharges of raw sewage from Combined Sewage & Stormwater Outfalls (CSO's) into the upper Tideway, plus huge discharges of untreated sewage from Thames Water sewage treatment works (even during dry periods). The Environment Agency monitor river water quality, but do not have a clear picture of the state of the river. The Corporation of London have recently become more concerned as they believe health hazards are becoming worse, and are running a survey of their own with the Health Protection Agency (TREC). Many Thames workers and river users are picking up water-borne parasites and illnesses associated with sewage.

The ‘solution’ favoured by the Environment Agency and Thames Water is to build a 35km storage/discharge tunnel under the river to take the water drainage & sewage from the CSO's. It was originally proposed in 1989 but rejected by the government as too costly, and now seems to be used as an excuse for not doing anything at all. Thames Water refuse to invest to reduce discharges and have not complied with the 1991 EU Urban Waste Water Treatment directive at the sewage treatment works. They are only now beginning work on a 10 year plan to bring the sewage treatment works up to standard.

We believe that London needs a fundamental change in policy for the handling of sewage and surface-water drainage. Quite simply the systems HAVE to be separated. This represents a much bigger task than the interceptor tunnel, but with progressive results as more and more water drainage is prevented from combining with sewage. The drainage of water should be routed into the river via the many (mostly covered) tributaries and sewage routed by pipe to the sewage treatment works. Not only does this help prevent sewage discharges into the river during periods of heavy rainfall, it also vastly reduces the volume of effluent that has to be processed by the treatment works.

We would like to see this argument investigated thoroughly, and at the very least adopted in part. Channelling large quantities of drainage water off the streets and roofs of London, straight into the sewers was noted as being a fundamental problem by Joseph Bazalgette in the 1800's (see history)- the only difference today is that the problem is even larger.