Been swimming in Langstone Harbour recently?

[RivalRedwing]

smelly was it?
Drone captures sewage pumped into sea for days

 

[Robert Wilson]

smelly was it?
Drone captures sewage pumped into sea for days

Saw it on the lunchtime news. Dreadful. Our rivers as well and The Lakes.
A scandal and a VERY big bill to sort it all out - if it's even possible.
Won't be quick, that's for sure.

 

[Frogmogman]

I was hesitating whether to post anything about Sewage-gate, on the basis that it might be construed as political, but this whole story is very disappointing.

It certainly makes the use of holding tanks a bit of a joke……

 

[Blueboatman]

Don’t worry
Every southern local authority is under pressure to build more houses
Maybe they’ll just pave over it ???

 

[lustyd]

Too expensive to sort out apparently. Not only did the majority of MPs vote to ignore this, they actually feel comfortable defending their decision. A little bit of sewage in the sea I can just about accept, but a morally bankrupt parliament makes me feel sick. The social media outrage will be gone by the weekend and people will forget that they're not voting for their favourite colour by the next election.
Tory MPs defend votes after uproar over sewage proposals

 

[jamie N]

Maggie T wasn't it, who wrote the debts off and flogged them to her donor chums.
Wouldn't happen in these enlightened times, where that sort of unscrupulous croneyism isn't acceptable; the party is above reproach on any form of corruption, as they're striving to narrow the gap between rich and poor, and even up opportunities for all through their fair play.

 

[Poignard]

Maggie T wasn't it, who wrote the debts off and flogged them to her donor chums.
Wouldn't happen in these enlightened times, where that sort of unscrupulous croneyism isn't acceptable; the party is above reproach on any form of corruption, as they're striving to narrow the gap between rich and poor, and even up opportunities for all through their fair play.

Yeh, right.

 

[Blueboatman]

Too expensive to sort out apparently. Not only did the majority of MPs vote to ignore this, they actually feel comfortable defending their decision. A little bit of sewage in the sea I can just about accept, but a morally bankrupt parliament makes me feel sick. The social media outrage will be gone by the weekend and people will forget that they're not voting for their favourite colour by the next election.
Tory MPs defend votes after uproar over sewage proposals

Yup ?
We all poop but some people are full of it ‘professionally’.
The mega expansion of Southampton sur mer along eastward through Langstone will get interesting . No one wants a new sewage treatment plant in their newly built backyard ??
Sensible change will possibly be spearheaded by the under 30s sidestepping the Olde Orderand just getting on with it

 

[Wing Mark]

The 'combined sewers' go back a very long way.
I think much of the system from pre-1900 to the 1980s or so is based on the idea that a good bit of rain flushes the sewers from time to time.
As society has become a bit more enlightened, the general idea has been to pump it further out to sea.

I'm told that Chichester is worse than Langstone Harbour, Langstone has the advantage that 90% of the water is changed twice a day.

So much house building in that area, they have to keep pumping whenever it rains, many thousands of houses less than 10m above sea level.
So much hard surface the rain runs off really quick.
Prescott's 'concrete the South' policy?

 

[Blueboatman]

First thing people do when they buy or (you) build them a house is to ‘ plan a family’

Sort of compound growth scheme , crackers if one is trying to reduce negative human impact on the environment ???

 

[Robert Wilson]

I've said it before, and no doubt I'll repeat it many times - "TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD"
and most of them waving two fingers at the environment problem.

 

[dgadee]

I've said it before, and no doubt I'll repeat it many times - "TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD"
and most of them waving two fingers at the environment problem.

You could do with a few of them moving up your direction.

 

[penfold]

Maggie T wasn't it, who wrote the debts off and flogged them to her donor chums.
Wouldn't happen in these enlightened times, where that sort of unscrupulous croneyism isn't acceptable; the party is above reproach on any form of corruption, as they're striving to narrow the gap between rich and poor, and even up opportunities for all through their fair play.

SW employ exactly the same systems and when it rains a lot the jobbies go straight into the sea; it isn't more virtuous just because there aren't any shareholders(well, one shareholder and that's symbolically the 1st Minister). They didn't even want to give us the system we've got, it required fairly intensive writing of letters to councillors, MPs and MSPs to get them to change the intended and much cheaper system which would have left half the houses in the village still discharging directly to the sea to one which treated the effluent from every house. It's all rubbish, the ownership of the entity delivering the carp service is irrelevant.

 

[jamie N]

Scottish Water, which is publicly owned, has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than the privatised English water companies, according to the analysis. It charges users 14% less and does not pay dividends.
Scottish Water also benefit from the topography of Scotland, but the effluent issue remains poor.
The difference is, that shareholder's don't remove money from the company and then expect the country to bail out their lack of investment, which is the relevant fact.

 

[Stemar]

Looking at nationalised industries and utilities. and the wonderfully efficient way they were run from the 60s to the 80s, I'm sure privatisation seemed like a good idea at the time but I've come to the conclusion that for profit utilities are about moral as for profit medicine. I've no objection to private enterprise offering a gold plated service for those who want to pay more - 5* hospital rooms or whatever, but the object of the main service should be providing that service, not making money for shareholders.

In project management, there are a couple of acronyms that sum the whole pile of poo up nicely. BATNIEC - best available technology not involving excessive cost, which is what we should be getting, and CATNAP - cheapest available technology, narrowly avoiding prosecution. We aren't even getting that. I reckon that all utilities should be informed that egregious breaches of their performance targets will result in renationalisation. I'll leave the experts to work out the consequences of compensation v no compensation, but I tend to no compensation - you've had your money in dividends that should have been spent on providing a service. In the mean time, any serious breach in a year means no dividend payments - put the money into getting the infrastructure right.

 

[Blueboatman]

One might - say in a litigious set up- lock down actual shareholders capital to provide the funds to build a working sewage system appropriate to the job description !
Well, ya’all did want to “invest” in it didn’t you ??
And now you have ?
Of course no one would ever ‘dare’invest again but hey , would that be sooo terribly anarchic in the long term ? Fingers burnt, lessons learnt, greed driven is no sole overriding guarantee of future performance
Catnap-ing. Pah!

 

[penfold]

Scottish Water, which is publicly owned, has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than the privatised English water companies, according to the analysis. It charges users 14% less and does not pay dividends.
Scottish Water also benefit from the topography of Scotland, but the effluent issue remains poor.
The difference is, that shareholder's don't remove money from the company and then expect the country to bail out their lack of investment, which is the relevant fact.

It's really not; the turds still end up in the Clyde when the rain fall is above a certain limit, which is the subject of the thread. If they charged the same and the turds didn't end up floating past the Cloch you might have a point.

 

[jamie N]

"Scottish Water, which is publicly owned, has invested nearly 35% more per household in infrastructure since 2002 than the privatised English water companies, according to the analysis. It charges users 14% less", is the point actually, as this has negated the issue to a level far below the privatised English companies, which have taken profit without re-investing in their infrastructure, which is the cause of the problem being greater in England, although not perfect in Scotland.
In England the consumers have paid more, for a less efficient service, that pollutes more and will cost far more to sort out.
It's becoming slightly political, in as much as it took the House of Lords to create a bit of a stink (haha) about it, and embarrass the English govt to think about taking positive action against this.
I used to swim in Langstone Harbour as it was literally at the end of our garden (North Shore Rd.), but wouldn't dream of allowing my kids anywhere near it now!

 

[jamie N]

This article in The National gives a fairly clear oversight on the issues involved, where neither the North or the South are as clean as they should be.

 

[Blueboatman]

Well from a sailing point of view it’s rather disgusting . Dinghies , anchor lines, beaches, wildlife , aroma …

It seems you can’t polish a turd ( but you can sell shares in it ) Meh