Sewage flowing in to Thames at Twickenham Bridge

Hi all,
this has really annoyed me since I noticed it the other week at the start of the annual draw-off, so this afternoon I popped down and took the photo's which you can see by following the link below.

RawSewageFlowingInToTheThamesAtTwickenhamBridge

Basically there's a sewer which has a broken flap-valve thing and it is perpetually discharging raw effluent directly in to the river. OK they might argue that it's just a trickle in my photo's, but you can see it's colouring the river water where it mixes in, and frankly, it stinks! Thames Water should be made to repair it, I don't think they should be allowed to discharge waste directly from the public sewers in this way.

Regards
Ed

nice one ed and I dont mean what you're refering to, it looks like a CSO to me, combined sewage outflow, nevertheless we'll check it out, but thames water are legally allowed to let this continue

its pants m8 and we gotta get it stopped

I think at the very least they should repair the flap valve thing (anyone know what the technical name for those is?) as the effect of it being in place would be to prevent anything coming out of the pipe almost all of the time when the river water level is higher than the level of the pipe (by simple water pressure). That effectively would mean at all times except the very lowest tides, as I don't think this outfall is exposed by much even at normal low tides. We can only see it now because of the draw-off.

How do I go about contacting Thames Water about this, should I just phone the call centre and raise a ticket in the same way as when my drains are blocked?!
(The interesting thing is that I live not that far away and my drains get blocked up quite regularly, sometimes they fill up only to spontaneously empty again - having seen this I'm starting to wonder whether there is a tidal link between the sewer in my road and this outfall!)

I think the draw-off is going to end soon, when it's over they will surely just leave it for (at least) another year.

Cheers
Ed

I have phoned the incident hotline at our friends at the Environment Agency,
I figured they should have more clout with Thames Water than I do!
They gave me incident ref. #841388 and (hopefully) they will be following it up....

Spot on Ed, please keep us updated as to the EA's reply.

Cheers

thanks ed, its a big help as our workload is never ending
the problem with these situations is Thames Water is legally allowed to let this continue, and they'd probably argue that its only a trickle,
one of my major concerns is the mis-connection of sewage into drains,
if the recent experiences concerning some eastern european builders are anything to go by, we could be well and truly in the pooh

It's as much a problem the other way around when people connect rainwater drainage direct into the foul drain instead of building a soakaway. This contributes rainwater directly to the storm surge that Thames Water have to deal with every time it rains.
When we had our rear extension built, we had to put in all new drains and dig a separate soakaway for the rainwater, yet when our neighbours decided to do the same they were just allowed to plumb the whole lot in to the foul! The council building inspectors are just as guilty for granting the "occasional" concession allowing people to do this.

Ed did you here anything back from the EA?

David Harvey wrote:

Ed did you here anything back from the EA?

No, not heard a thing. Unfortunately, I didn't realise at the time, but the day I raised the incident was the very last day of the draw-off. That particular outlet won't be exposed again until next November. I doubt there's much they can do, can't even see it (other than my photo's) until then.

howdy ed, aint surprised the EA ain't got back to you, maybe a follow up call wouldn't hurt

as you know this club was started because of this type of pollution, stupidly I thought there were laws against it
we now know that the water companies can do what they want, and are exempt from freedom of information enquiries

basically we have no legal right to know what they do

it all sucks m8, but we gotta keep trying to change it

Called up the EA just now, after some enquiries (it seems that the EA's incident-reference system is perhaps not a single all-encompassing database holding all info about it!) the person determined which team was dealing with my incident put me through ...
They determined that the issue is a "Mis-connection to a broken asset" and as such is to be dealt with by Thames Water. They brought it to the attention of Thames Water on 8th December at 11:10.
They have no Thames Water reference number for it that they could give me.

Eeerrrmmm, that's it.

If I was more on-the-ball I'd have pressed harder for info on how they follow it up and ensure that TW deals with it appropriately, but I'm not that sharp, I always only think of what I should've said 5 minutes after the event!

Cheers Ed, thanks for the update. You were sharp enough to notice it and report the incident in the first place, something we all should do so top marks fella.

The most important thing is reporting it and getting it logged. The EA admit that if an incident is reported on a number of occasions, it flags up in the system and gets higher priority.

Anyway TW again responsilble, a familiar story.

Water companaies are the biggest polluters of the UK rivers. Here are a few links to some more info

Ecologist

Times

mis-connection to a broken asset

more like another non-descript excuse

james page wrote:

mis-connection to a broken asset

more like another non-descript excuse

A possible translation may be "FUBAR"

Quote :

Subject: Broken CSO at Twickenham bridge
Sent to mogden@thameswater.co.uk on Sep 4, 2011, 9:16 AM

Dear Ms. Goren,

Thankyou for your interesting presentation at the Rugby Stadium last week.
The TAC members were very interested to read about it in a short summary I wrote
for them afterwards. You can find out more about the TAC at http://www.rivertac.org/

Here are the details of the broken CSO which I briefly mentioned.
I raised an EA incident about it on 28th November 2010, reference #841388
The EA records say that they notified Thames Water of it on 8th December 2010.

The photo's that I took also pinpoint the location on a map, they are publically available
at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/105140280237210420217/RawSewageFlowingInToTheThamesAtTwickenhamBridge

The dates of the 2011 draw-off are: Sunday 6th November 13:00 - Sunday 27th November 18:00
Between these dates the Richmond lock sluices are kept open during low tide so it should
be relatively easy for it to be repaired around low tide times.

If it is possible to identify the properties which are mis-connected and get them
to fix the problem as well, that would also be appreciated.

regards,

Ed Randall

Good work Ed

My contact at TW has been quote tenacious at following this through for us; Update as of 3rd October

Quote :

...The update today is that neither we or the Environment
Agency have a record of what happened with the incident you raised last
year, yet it has been closed down. Therefore I am currently raising
another request for our network team to go and investigate / fix the CSO.

I will keep in regular contact until this issue is resolved.

Kind regards

I thought this had been sorted but clearly not. Could hardly miss it walking over the Twickenham road bridge today.
Get down closer and you can smell it too.

Just received from Thames Water:

Quote :

Hi Ed
Thanks for taking the time to send this information on to me. One of our
technicians did attend the site earlier in the year, but felt that the work
could not be undertaken until the next drawdown. I have now requested that
an additional job be raised during low tide on the basis of your photos and
the work is scheduled to be carried out on Monday 18 June.

Perhaps it would be prudent for us to meet at Twickenham Bridge sometime
later that week or the week after? You will need to give me directions
though, as I don't know Twickenham that well.

- although at a corporate level I suspect that the company is rotten,
there are people on the ground who work there who really do seem to be
trying hard to do the right thing.

Nice one Ed, good to see some common sense at a working level at least

Ed well done for perservering, excellent work.

Yet again it seems no other user group on or by the river is bothered enough about the river and it's down to an angler to do something.

Well done Ed

Mike

TAC are soon going to start a campaign to get these unmonitored CSOs sorted out.
We have many of the "known" ones mapped. We want to deal with those.
But these "unknown" ones (as above, it was not on any database) are what we will need members help with. Especially if you come across one discharging the nasty stuff.
Watch this space.

Great work Ed, keep at them mate

This morning I met with Emily and Heather who work for Thames water at Mogden, at the site of this CSO.
This allowed them to witness first-hand the continuing foul discharge emanating from it. There certainly was a strong foul odour filling the air.
A technician has been scheduled to investigate and repair the broken flap valve this week, so discharges will not occur when the water level is above the valve, which is all of the time except at low tide during the draw-off.
Emily has scheduled a further job to try to track down the source of the mis-connections which are actually running in to the pipe. It will then be up to the home owners to fix their foul drains. (I suspect that the culprits will quickly become apparent when the flap-valve has been fixed as they will complain that their drains are backing up....)

I added a few more photos to the 2-year-old album relating to this:
https://picasaweb.google.com/105140280237210420217/RawSewageFlowingInToTheThamesAtTwickenhamBridge

The Mogden treatment works upgrades are on schedule for completion in March 2013. This should mean the end of the Mogden "sewage discharge notification" emails! Emily invited us for a tour of the site, probably in February 2013 just before the upgrade opens. We will be given a tour of the old and new upgraded tanks, they should be able to offer 10 places for the tour. When I have finalised the date and details I will post more on that.