Sewage ruling is good news

My understanding is that Thames Water Utilities Ltd, a statutory sewerage undertaking, responsible for some 80,000 kilometres of sewerage pipes in the Thames region, was prosecuted by the Environment Agency for illegally depositing waste, it being alleged that, on 11 occasions between February and April 2003, untreated sewage constituting controlled waste escaped into controlled waters in or on to land in Kent. The defence was that sewage which escaped did not amount to controlled waste. Section 75(4) of the 1990 Act defined “controlled waste” as “household, industrial and commercial waste”. See ruling here.

Photo: Repairs to the pipebridge - site of many sewage incidents - near Bread Street, Ruscombe last year

If my understanding is right this means that prosecution is now possible if sewage escapes not from EA consented outflows ie from manholes or other sources. Advice welcomed on this!

I wonder if this will also make prosecution easier for cases where sewage is spilled - there was the shocking case last month in Scotland where one hundred million litres of sewage, at a thousand litres a second, was discharged into the Forth when a pump failed at Edinburgh’s Seafield Wastewater Treatment Plant - see report here.

However we also need to stop the consented discharges - see article here re London's sewage tunnel that Thames water ratepayers in Gloucestershire will be paying for. The tunnel will be twice the height of a double-decker bus, will stretch for more than 20 miles and carry away more than 32 million cubic metres of sewage that pours into the river every year when the existing network becomes overwhelmed.

Raw sewage is currently mixed with run-off water is channelled into the river fifty to sixty times a year, about once a week, and the rate is expected to increase with climate change. It takes only 2 millimetres of rain to fall within one hour for pipes in London to fill up and to begin discharging sewage into the Thames at one or more of 36 overflow points. Sewage discharges drastically reduce the quality of the water and poison fish and other river life. In August 2004 a single discharge killed more than 10,000 fish and hundreds of thousands of fish fry. Clearly improvements to the system are needed but it is tragic not more cost-effective sustainable solutions are being considered as opposed to this £2 billion tunnel.