Environment Bill: Government U-turn over water firms dumping raw sewage after fierce backlash
The change in direction comes after several Tory MPs faced a huge backlash from constituents when they voted down the amendment to the Environment Bill tabled by the Lords last week.
The government has U-turned by deciding to put legal controls on water firms dumping raw sewage in the sea and rivers across the country despite recently forcing Tory MPs to vote down similar proposals.
First Covid all over the place and now sewage. Global warming could make it all very unpleasant. The issue mainly relates to storm overflows. Spend enough money and the problem could be resolved apart from extreme flash flooding. Cancel HS2 and allow some of that waste to flow into more practical civil engineering for example.
But it is worth taking a sideways look at sewage too. Last year net migration to the UK was 313,000. If we take the volume of wastewater generated per head in the home as 150 litres, we have the UK producing an increased 47 million litres of wastewater per day over a single year thanks to inward migration.
Back of an envelope stuff but worth doing because apart from anything else the sewage has to go somewhere. Unfortunately the political class doesn't really like numbers though.
For example, the sewage generated by 30,000 COP26 delegates would swamp the sewage works of a small to medium sized town such as Matlock. That's an impressive amount of sewage, but it does have the UN behind it.
5 comments:
The people complaining about the sewage companies being allowed to discharge at sea would undoubtedly be the same people screaming that their bills had gone up massively when the cost of stopping it was added on to them.
There's another issue thats bubbling under regarding sewage disposal - recently the Environment Agency have told farmers that they may no longer spread manures onto arable land in the autumn because 'the needs of the crop do not justify it', and it may cause leaching of nutrients into watercourses. In future manures can only be spread in the spring. This includes sewage sludge, which is what remains after sewage has been through a sewage treatment plant. Its a black soil in effect. It is currently disposed of on farmland as a fertiliser, mostly in the autumn as it can then be ploughed or cultivated in and the crop sown straight after. If autumn spreading is banned, then most farmers will no longer take the sludge, because they can't spread it onto existing crops, and while some could go on in the spring for land destined for spring crops, its usually too wet in the late winter/early spring to get on the land and spread the material. And anyway, most crops are autumn sown, not spring, so the acreage that could take it would drop massively.
So potentially there will be a massive surplus of sewage sludge looking for a home in the next few years. Disposal at sea is out, all that remains is incineration or disposal in landfill, both of which are exceedingly expensive - at the moment the farmers pay a small amount for the sludge and the water companies deliver and spread it for free. If it all has to go to landfill or be incinerated, water/sewage bills will be rising significantly to pay for it.
At the moment farmers and water companies have been given a derogation for this winter to continue as before, but from next year it looks like the EA will be bringing the ban in properly. Then the sh*t will hit the fan as what to do with millions of tonnes of sewage sludge annually becomes a hot political potato.
This reminds me of the times when my father and I would make a stopover on our way fishing. We visited an old abandoned sewage works where we would pick bucket loads of tomatoes. To be pickled, chutneyed or just munched raw. What is soil if it isn't sh*t?
Your maths may need amending. Many of those migrating here will be fond of spicy foods or harbouring giardiasis and the like, which would increase their output.
Sobers - interesting. Sewage sludge will certainly become a problem if spreading on land is no longer available. Dewatering down to a cake is expensive and requires chemicals and even then the cake has to be disposed of. As you say, incineration and landfill are also expensive.
None of this will be counted as yet another cost of being greener though.
Andy - and we know where the tomato seeds came from. I remember blokes who worked on a working sewage works who would still be able to collect tomatoes from the old sludge beds.
Sam - yes, at least we knew where we were with British effluent.
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