Super Sewer: Why does London need the Thames Tideway Tunnel?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24015254

12 September 2013 Last updated at 00:18 BST

A Planning Inspectorate examination begins on Thursday into plans for the UK's biggest sewage tunnel.

The £4.2bn, 15-mile (24km) long, 200ft (61m) deep Thames Tideway Tunnel will capture 39 million tonnes of untreated sewage that is currently flushed into the Thames every year.

It will create arguably the biggest sewer network in Europe but environmentalists say it will cause significant disruption over a decade and that there are cheaper, greener alternatives, including "living" walls and roofs to drain rainwater back into soil and not into the sewers.

Tom Bateman has been down the current Victorian sewers to see what the problem is now.

Video journalist: Richard Kenny

sow on the news this afterneen, before i went to me new job, that some of the anti people who dont wont the tunnel recon that we should do living walls, then saw it, a wall covered in grass, these me thinking I,m nuts/loony/cracked up/one shout of a penny

looks like I am normal  


 

 

More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24046324

instead of the super tunnul, this is wot London will look like, if some people get there way,

That will deal with some of the rain water.
Not sure how it will deal with the poo.
I think we need both.

The arguments against the Thames Tideway Tunnel, once you dig a little deeper ( ), are a nonsense. Yes it is wrong that that the consumer will pay for it through increased bills; yes it is wrong to assume that the Tunnel is the end of our problems concerning how we deal with London's sewage. BUT, the Tunnel option as it is now proposed, is the only immediate short term option to make a big advancement to the problem within the next decade. The green infrastructure (GI) project that should also accompany the tunnel needs to be implemented too.

I have no problem in stating that the "so called" conservation groups that cite that the tunnel option as being the 'wrong' option is based originally on NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard ism). With reasonable funding they have tried to build a case against the tunnel option to prevent it from being built near their properties etc. the alternative schemes - such as two split tunnels, more boats skimming sh*t of the surface, and bubblers reducing oxygen sags are a ruse to pacify their fellow NIMBY supporters (like Patrick Stewart). They are seriously misguiding people on the issue. However, let's see how long they stick around and continue fighting for the Thames if the Tunnel option is given planning permission... that'll be worth keeping an eye on.

Such groups do not give a fig for the ecology of the river, its health and improvement, they've just created a smoke screen to add weight to their argument to see the tunnel proposal diluted or to be refused at the planning stage, basically to prevent it being built next to their property, simple as.

Yes green infrastructure is needed in London, but that will take decades to retrofit and also introduce to the entire policy remit of London's local Councils.

Get f***ing real and stop talking b***cks!  


Richard

Here's the oppositions ace card, green infrastructure, and the TAC will have no problem campaigning for GI once the tunnel is given the go ahead, as is said in the news item's footage, it should form a part of the "long term" solution for London's sewerage problem (which has existed for 500 years...).

See Here for the short BBC news report

The immediate benefits that the opposition cite, as can be seen here, do not help the ecology anywhere near to the extent of the proposed tunnel.



Richard

Spot on mate, we need both.

SuDs etc will not work on its own, and the idea of digging every street up in London and making them separate sewers is laughable. Yes if we had no cars, public transport of people, otherwise impossible.

David Harvey wrote:

Spot on mate, we need both.

SuDs etc will not work on its own, and the idea of digging every street up in London and making them separate sewers is laughable. Yes if we had no cars, public transport of people, otherwise impossible.

And if we talk about a seperate sewerage system, meaning that we should seperate rain fall and waste water by splitting sewers, the cost of that would be billions over decades...

In the mid nineteenth century they considered the seperate sewerage system, but decided against it due to the cost. There were 6 seperate commissions that tried to resolve the Thames' sewerage problem between 1847-54, all of them failing to resolve "issues" between the commission members (sound familiar?).

Eventually it got so bad, that by 1858 Benjamin Disraeli (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) just pushed through a bill on the 2nd of August before the situation became even worse. Similar to saying... 'stop talking b***ocks, get it done!'

London's sewerage system was then built as a combined system, that's what we have now, 20,000 miles of combined sewers. That's not to say that through green infrastructure that you can remove a percentage of the rain water load elsewhere.

Blah de blah, blah, blah.


Richard