Saturday 28 October 2023
The Sewage System
Ed Conway has a useful Sky piece on the intractable problem of sewage overflows and where the responsibilities lie. Unusually even-handed by the environmental standards of big media and well worth reading for those interested in the issue.
Down the drain: What went wrong with Britain's water system?
If you were going to design Britain's sewage system from scratch today, the one we have, to put it mildly, isn't the design you'd pick. But for most of the country, it's simply too late. Most urban areas have systems that "bake in" sewage spills pretty much forever.
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7 comments:
It's the first mover problem.
At least we've done a proper experiment to see which system works best at renovating an archaic infrastructure:
"We’ve also run a natural experiment here. England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland got different ownership and management systems as a result of privatisation. The spectrum was from most capitalist to least. The best results have also been along that same spectrum - England, Wales, Scotland, NI.
We have, in fact, gone and tested those theoretical speculations. Done it with the water systems of entire nations. And guess what? Capitalism works best. Sure, well regulated capitalism and all that. But capitalism all the same"
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/but-if-welsh-water-is-worse-than-english-water-then-what-about-privatisation
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Nessimmersion - a few years after privatisation I was chatting with a chap who looked after the analytical data for rivers and sewage works discharges in the Midlands. He said there had been a noticeable improvement since privatisation. The same people were doing the analysis to the same standard as part of the regulation function.
@AKH
My suspicion is that if you put to one side all the activists who want a better environment right now, most other people are happy to make small incremental improvements (e.g. quality of water) over time. It is less disruptive, costs less, and avoids a whole self-regarding bureaucracy being created. Plus people eventually get a better, healthier, environment with time to adapt.
Even 'big' changes take time. The town gas conversion was undertaken in the UK between 1967 and 1977.
The Clean Air act was introduced in 1956 (4 years after the Great Smog of London in 1952) but there have been several follow on Acts and is not 100% effective even now.
Seatbelt legislation required manufacturers to fit three-point belts in the front outboard positions on all new cars, and retrospectively fitted to all cars registered from 1965 onwards. It wasn’t until 31 January 1983 that a law requiring all drivers and front seat passengers to wear their seatbelts came into force.
So... plenty can be done, it just takes time.
DJ - I agree, incremental is usually best because we learn as we go and it reduces the risks we get with major vanity projects. As you say, activists want a better environment right now and it doesn't work that way. They should have their say, but too much media attention is paid to their complaints and too little to the practical and economic issues.
In that wonderful book The Skeptical Environmentalist (US spelling in the title) it is pointed out that if you plot the decline of air pollution in Britain (or maybe it was London) there was no change of slope when the Clean Air Act was introduced. The pollution carried on declining at just the same rate as it had before the Act.
Well, in a lop sided way, they've done the same thing with secondary education haven't they? And they don't want to accept the disasterous results.
dearieme - interesting but I'm not surprised, there must have been a number of factors which had little to do with the legislation. Ironically, the spread of gas central heating would be one.
Tammly - in a way yes, they have done something they can't reverse.
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