• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Sewage dumping in rivers.

It is nick, I was under the impression my local rivers had actually got cleaner over the last few years due to increased sightings of brown trout and salmon. Its disheartening to see them encourage wildlife with one hand only to poision them with the other.
 
Is it treated sewage or the raw stuff?

Treated sewage is released into the oceans and also various marshlands (I think) that have reed like plants to absorb them.
 
They were focusing on untreated overspill in the report last night. They are allowed to dump excess sewage proving they meet certain criteria like percentages treated and if there's a lot of excess ground water, in the film clips last night it was suggested that a lot of these water treatment sites release waste prior to meeting said criteria.
The waste shown last night hadn't even been through a screener, tampons, wipes, e.t.c.

Paragraph taken from article ~

Panorama gathered detailed data from 10 water companies in England and Wales through environmental information requests. They were each asked for information on a handful of sewage works.

The data suggests seven of the 10 companies had treatment works that were breaching their permits by dumping sewage before they were treating the specified volumes.

One of the worst offenders was the not-for-profit company, Welsh Water. The data shows three of its treatment works were in breach of their permits.

Its Aberbaiden plant illegally dumped untreated sewage into the River Usk on 12 consecutive days in December.
 
Last edited:
Hi all,
Is it treated sewage or the raw stuff?
It is raw sewage. Technically all our sewage is treated before release into inland, or coastal, waters, but many of the water companies have derogation that allows them to discharge raw sewage in "exceptional circumstances", such as to stop raw sewage backing up into people bathrooms etc.

One reason that these "exceptional circumstances" have happened much more frequently in recent years is <"people flushing "wet wipes">, and if you visit a sewage treatment works all the screens etc are festooned with them and they <"often trap "fat bergs" as well">.

Much of our <"sewerage system is over a hundred years old">, and many of our water treatment works are still using technology and equipment that predates the middle of the twentieth century.
and also various marshlands (I think) that have reed like plants to absorb them.
There isn't much use of <"phytoremediation in the UK">, partially because a lot of us live on a very small island, which both allows most properties to be connected to mains drainage and makes land very expensive. We also have the issue of quite a long dark winter.

I know it might seem alarmist as a program, but really it is just scratching the surface. The Environment Agency has been <"hollowed out" quite deliberately by the Government over the last ten years">.

Pre-BREXIT they still had the issue of "appeasing" the EU, but <"post BREXIT those constraints don't exist"> and they really are both judge and jury.

You only have to <"look at the USA"> for the <"huge profits you can make"> by not treating waste water or sewage.
I was under the impression my local rivers had actually got cleaner over the last few years due to increased sightings of brown trout and salmon. Its disheartening to see them encourage wildlife with one hand only to poision them with the other.
This is the "post industrial" bonus.

cheers Darrel
 
Last edited:
I suppose we are to some extent the architects of own demise, as in we've all become a throw away society and lots of us happily buy up the new build houses that increasingly pop up on green field sites.
 
Not so long ago a similar scandal was made public in my country... Few journalists investigated the water companies to find out what happens with the sludge sediment from their water cleaning installations.

They secretly followed the trucks collecting and transporting this to see where it is stored or processed... Evidently, recorded on camera they were caught dumping this at a small dock back into the North Sea - Far from the eye, Far from the heart... Back into the water. :banghead:

One would think that things would change after something like this is publically revealed... But the truth is even more shocking...

Not very long after this, some journalists were tipped off to investigate the contents of cargo ships dumping rather strange looking soil into former river sand and gravel pits at the Rihn river. These former pits converted back to a nature reserve should be made shallow again. And water tests showed something suspicious going on. So they asked the captains of the ships for papers and they showed official Clean Soil Statements. After taking a sample it seemed the soil they were dumping came from our biggest asphalt producing company... They were dumping their Granulite...


Till now they run into a brick wall to find out how this could happen and who finally is responsible for giving this company an official Clean Soil statement to dump toxic waste in a nature reserve. It points to rather unscrupulous corrupt politicians and or government employees. But it is rather dismissed as an individual one-off incident by mistake.

Things like this keep coming up in the media, but since people seem to actually don't want this all to be true rather forget it again soon. Leaving all the room the go to the next scandal... Vicious circle?
 
Last edited:
There is a good documentary on Netflix at the moment, Seaspiracy.

It's more about plastic pollution and the fishing industry, but it does show just how hard it can be for the public to make decisions about sustainable fish and what plastics are actually causing issues as well as some other unsavoury things.

A couple of examples are the fact the many of the largest sustainable fishing logos you see on things like tuna are given to pretty much anyone who pays, and that most of the plastics in the sea are from the fishing industry.
 
It's all about over population and economics ;) until governments start actually acting on it, nothing will ever change and fat cats fill their pockets!

All these charities and protection groups at the end of the day most just about economics too and protecting the industry rather than the ambient/animals, and just promote campaigns that deflect from the actual truth! Make the public think they are doing something but in fact what they are doing is nothing compared to the overall scale of what is happening behind! (like the plastic straw debacle, exaggerated when you go into a supermarkets and everything is way over packaged in plastics too, and like Nick says fishing boats discard their nets into the sea most of the time which is what causes ocean pollution and kills large fish, not to mention the by catch).

Until governments come together as a whole, not much is going to change! But that will never happen as everyone is out there trying to fill their pockets too! So we are all pretty much doomed....
 
not to mention the by catch.

So we are all pretty much doomed....

This is one of the main reasons i don't eat fish/shellfish or anything from the ocean.

Imagine if this was happening on land, take 100's of 1000's of miles of net and drag it across the African savanna, then chuck all the dead lions, elephants and everything else back, there would be global uproar. But dump 40% of the fish you catch and 100's of millions of sharks, birds, seals, dolphins and whales etc back into the sea dead or dying and no one takes any notice.

Glad to see it's not just me who thinks that there is no turning back, it's a rather depressing feeling.

Sorry @John q, I know this isn't sewage related.
 
Last edited:
Sorry @John q, I know this isn't sewage related.
It's the same theory in the end, governments not acting on it and economics! Population is growing, backend systems cannot cope any more due to age, technology and capacity, and not spending money where they should and instead building war ships, etc....
 
Remeber Little Greta Thunberg? Crying publicly about Global Warming and angry yelling "HOW DARE YOU!!" to the politicians etc. etc.

Not long after her first public appearances shouting, crying and yelling she was invited to visit the USA to give a speech. And she only approved if she could go there by sailing boat to make a statement about aeroplanes having too much environmental impact.

So Little Greta got her way and a sailing boat with a 15 head crew was arranged to sail her to the USA. Big head lines front page spectacle... Isn't it?

A few days later, not really front page but a small announcement a few pages deeper into the paper an article appears "Greta's sailing crew flew back home." How Greta got home is never revealed...

But a gut feeling tells me there were at least 16 aeroplane passengers involved to make it happen. :p

Who wouldn't want to throw such a little spoiled big mouth brat under the bus?
 
I believe Greta actually sailed back from the US on a catamaran to Lisbon, at least I think I read that in the press.
Regards the crew and skipper, yes lots of flights and no carbon neutrality.
 
Last edited:
My apologies for being a tad rude to Greta... I have no intention to throw here literally under the bus... Also not my intention to mock her personally... She probably is a victim too at her young age, exploited and encouraged by media sharks to go public with such an act. It seems to have a lot more impact on the public than if David Attenborough would tell the same story.
 
We need Greta, just as we need David Attenborough and everyone else we can possibly get if we are ever to tackle climate change properly. David Attenborough loves Greta, for good reason. She may not be to your taste, but her speech made a tangible positive impact to climate policy in Europe (see the Green New Deal by the EU). Protest is not polite or pretty, and the facts of our future if we don't change aren't either. She doesn't stand alone, she stands with millions of young people, and millions of adults too.

Real positive change is possible, it is not all doom and gloom, but we all have to do what we can. It's not our individual consumer choices that make a difference, but our political choices, our choices of who to work for and how to work, our voices, what we do with our lives. I actually think that this hobby we are doing is something positive - this forum is actively educating people to love, appreciate and look after nature is something that is severely lacking, we understand ecosystems far better than most, that itself is a political act, the more people that care about nature, the more likely we are to be able to protect it.

Some really good, not depressing things to read/watch/listen to about climate and pollution (staying on topic) are:
<Rewilding, by Isabella Tree> - a book about how a couple with a farm transformed it into a wildlife haven with regenerative farming
"Kiss the Earth" a documentary on Netflix, about more industrial regenerative farming. We can do this ourselves in our own gardens and allotments too though, my parents started doing the 'no dig' method a few years ago and we've seen far more wildlife, healthy soil and better crops after starting it.
<How to save a Planet Podcast>, which has episodes detailing all sorts of interesting ways to tackle the climate emergency and pollution, and how we can do our part in many real, small and big ways, and how the solutions and technologies are already out there.
<Drilled Podcast> This podcast will make you livid, but it will also make you feel less guilty if you feel that way (I used to feel very guilty that we caused climate change). It's about how the oil and plastics industry knew that the climate emergency would happen, then hid the data and did it all anyway. As normal people, none of it is really our fault, it is all government, big corporations and industry.
 
Indeed, but it will take a collaboration of many governments to make a real change, Greta is a positive message delivered in not a so positive method which sometimes is counterproductive and loses the opportunity (personally I don't like the exploitation she has been put under to deliver that message, hence some mocking, could have been handled a lot differently in a more positive manner).
Politics will always protect large industries and corporations and let them get away with a lot of stuff. But hit hard on the little guys and make an example of them just for public blindness ;)
Off course a lot of positive things have been done and keep improving, but are they improving fast enough? Can the damage be reversed fast enough! That is the real question!
My diet for the last few years has been about 70% plant based, some months possibly 90%, but I go into a large supermarkets and find a couple of shelves in the whole store dedicated to plant based food, and over 2-3 years the selection is pretty much the same!
 
We need Greta, just as we need David Attenborough and everyone else we can possibly get if we are ever to tackle climate change properly.
I personally do not doubt the good intentions of these people and also have no doubt that we need to have a change.

When it comes to climate change and that humanity is the cause and that we can change the outcome of it is very much divided into 2 camps of believers and non-believers. I like to steer away from the rather politically loaded discussions about this. I like to listen to the scientific reasoning of both camps and can only come to one conclusion that I do not know what to believe. And I tend to agnostically lean towards the belief, that we actually can't know... And I probably will not live long enough to find out.

All I can do is hope it all works out for the next generation.

For the rest, I do have a car but only drive <1000 miles a year in a good year. Mainly do everything on my bicycle within a 20-mile radius. I'm never was such a traveller and suffer from homesickness. But that is something a already did before the climate debate. So I do this for my self actually. :)
 
Back
Top