[HN Gopher] Real-time, river sections downstream of sewage disch...
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Real-time, river sections downstream of sewage discharges from
storm overflows
Author : markx2
Score : 41 points
Date : 2025-01-28 14:35 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sewagemap.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sewagemap.co.uk)
| krunck wrote:
| Whoa. What is wrong with UK sewage treatment systems? Oh, I see.
| They're having flooding from heavy rains: https://check-for-
| flooding.service.gov.uk/?v=map-live&lyr=mv...
|
| They need to build more capacity to handle this.
| ajb wrote:
| We just built a PS5B sewage tunnel bigger than the Elizabeth
| line[1] across London, it's hard to see why there should still
| be discharges into the Thames.
|
| The other problem is that much of our system was built before
| it was recognised that it's better to have separate sewage and
| surface water systems. (Oddly enough, the word sewage
| originally referred to surface water drainage, not excrement).
|
| [1] The Elizabeth line is our newest and widest metro line. The
| new tunnel at 7m diameter is larger, although technically since
| it only goes in one direction it's only bigger than half the
| Elizabeth line - it being the general consensus that sewage
| does not need to make a return journey.
| tialaramex wrote:
| To be fair, the Thames Tideway is storage, whereas the
| Elizabeth Line is transit.
|
| That is, if you're stuck in a tunnel on an Elizabeth Line
| train for an hour that's a fault, everybody wants to fix that
| and then you'll get to Reading or, Heathrow (airport) or
| Woolwich or whatever.
|
| But a turd in the Thames Tideway is _supposed_ to be sat
| there, it 's temporary storage, the idea is if twice as much
| rainfall as normal happens over a 24 hour period, we don't
| need twice as much sewage treatment capacity, we just need to
| store those turds for a while so that on average it works out
| OK.
|
| Which still doesn't answer your original objection - Thames
| Water are shit, blame the Tories for once again taking a
| monopoly at point of use service which costs money and
| "improving" it by giving private investors a way to make
| money and then saying Oops when of course they take the money
| but leave the problem they were supposed to be solving
| unfixed.
|
| In the _very_ big picture the original problem, as for our
| rail infrastructure, is that England is very, very old.
| London has a single Combined (ie rain water and human
| effluent mix) sewer system because it was built many years
| before anybody invented separated sanitary and rain water
| sewers. A retro-fit upgrade, which some US cities have done,
| is incredibly expensive, nobody wants to pay for that even if
| it could be attempted. I don 't anybody has even tried to
| estimate for London. Tens of Billions of pounds? Hundreds?
| mattlondon wrote:
| FWIW where I live in London the issue is that the local
| drains going along residential etc streets are overwhelmed.
| So there are various overflow locations etc where when the
| sewers are full to bursting and overflowing back up into
| people's toilets, they don't and instead overflow into local
| water courses. We're miles away from the super sewer, so
| they'd need to improve the capacity from our house all the
| way for that to work.
|
| We have a particular issue with just surface water (not
| sewage luckily!) where I live. Usual finger pointing game
| between the council and Thames water and us, but the word
| from the guy from the council is that the surface water
| drains are just too small for modern weather systems, so when
| we get a _very_ heavy downfall we have water being forced
| _up_ and out of the drains where our guttering empties into,
| leading to about 2 or 3 inches of water around the entire
| house before it drains away into lower land in the garden.
|
| I don't fully believe him that the pipes are too small (it
| rained in the past too!) - I suspect it is just partially
| silted-up/blocked/collapsed somewhere nearby after over 100
| years of neglect, but of course Thames water have no money
| nor impetus to fix it. We've had non-return valves fitted in
| the pipes on our property (at a fairly large expense since we
| had to dig down) to try and abate our house getting flooded
| when it rains. So far so good....
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Thames water have no money nor impetus to fix it.
|
| No impetus, sure, but they have had money - they just paid
| it out in dividends to shareholders instead of using it to
| invest and fix problems.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Indeed. The privatisation of the English water companies
| has been a literal shit show. The price to the consumer
| (e.g. me) goes up every year, but there is ever more shit
| in our rivers and shit on our beaches. Why? Because my
| fees go to paying dividends (often to foreign companies
| and governments) and massive bonuses, while the system
| falls apart. Last I heard, Thames Water was PS14B in
| debt. The government is apparently unable or unwilling to
| do anything about it. The water company is a monopoly, so
| I have no choice in the mater, beyond stopping using
| water. This is how rapacious capitalism works.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Well yeah, why fix the drains when they can run a
| business etc.
|
| I think it is fairly ludicrous to allow something like
| this to be privatised. It just doesn't make sense to me
| but then I am not PM.
|
| I am kinda hoping they'll let it go bankrupt and then
| nationalise it for pennies-on-the-pound (a "haircut" for
| the investors).
| FranOntanaya wrote:
| To be fair to our ancestors, their sewage composition was
| much simpler than the exotic chemical cocktail we send down
| the drain nowadays.
| toast0 wrote:
| Depends on what Industry was dumping into sewers at the
| time; there tends to be less of that these days.
| nsteel wrote:
| Are we having flooding from heavy rain? I think the weather has
| been uninteresting lately. Happy to talk about it, of course!
|
| This sewage dumping into our rivers is "normal". But to be
| clear, it is absolutely disgusting and the result of corporate
| greed and corruption.
| greggsy wrote:
| Holy moly I wasn't expecting that map to be so busy. What a time
| to be alive that you can create such a details map with real time
| public data.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| As a kayaker, kudos to whoever is behind this.
| peterpost2 wrote:
| Neat site, any plans for adding support for Scotland?
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(page generated 2025-01-31 23:00 UTC)