Hammersmith and Fulham Liberal Democrats

Council scaremongering on "super-sewer"

On 17 November, members of Hammersmith and Fulham Lib Dems, with our PPC Merlene Emerson, attended a well publicised meeting at Hammersmith Town Hall, organised by H&F Council, to be told about plans for a "super-sewer".

H&F Council's website had made clear the Council's strong opposition to the scheme, even extending to an instruction to officers not to cooperate with Thames Water engineers wanting to carry out investigations at Furnival Gardens.

The meeting was very well attended, with representatives from the Council; Hounslow Borough Council, the Environment Agency; Thames Water; the Consumer Council for Water and Ravenscourt Park Residents Committee.

At least 200 residents attended, most of whom arrived extremely concerned by reports that the project would involve the digging up of either Furnival Gardens or Ravenscourt Park, or both, with major construction works lasting for up to 8 years. A great deal of the meeting was devoted to questioning Thames Water on this point.

Although the whole project is in its infancy with no fully engineered plan, Thames Water were able to assure residents that Ravenscourt Park did not meet any of the criteria it proposed for a suitable access site, and Furnival Gardens, though presently the site of one of the more significant overflow points, was almost certainly unsuitable as a major access site, though some building work would be needed there to link its outfall into the scheme.

THE "SUPER-SEWER" is a proposed tunnel under the Thames, which will take overflows from the sewage system to treatment works at Becton in East London. At present all rainfall over London drains into the sewage system and whenever there is an episode of "heavy rain" (in London, anything over 2mm) the sewers get overloaded. Overflows then spill directly into the Thames through about 30 - 40 outfalls.

Because of increasing building and hard surfacing in London these "exceptional" overflows now happen about 60 times a year, or an average of every 6 days, carrying both the rainwater and whatever sewage is in the system.

Environmental protection legislation requires the water companies to take steps to prevent this and Thames Water's preferred solution, still in the very early discussion stages, is the 32 Km tunnel to run under the river bed to Becton Water Treatment Works, collecting the water at the outfalls, and large enough to act as a holding reservoir as well as drain.

David Wandle from the Environment Agency explained that ever other water company in the UK had already taken measures to combat the issue of sewage-contaminated waste water draining untreated into rivers, and that it was necessary to comply with EU regulations.

Andrew Whetnall of the Consumer Council suggested that the regulations were not so clear-cut, and that the EU Commission has agreed that they did not need to be fulfilled if there is excessive cost. The budget stands at an estimated £2.2bn, which comes to about £37 per year per person for a generation.

The battle for whether the project is needed seems to be between these two points of view. Residents and consumer groups were concerned that investment should go to dealing with immediate local issues such as local flooding, and the tunnel will not stop this - it is not designed to do so - although it may give some release, as it will take the strain off the pumping stations. Nor will it suddenly clean up the Thames, which is the cleanest it has been for decades. The health benefits are questionable, with only 18 cases of illness attributed to water born pollutants in one 15-month study.

Thames Water and the Environment Agency stressed that investment in this project was unconnected with investment in flooding prevention, which would be addressed from a separate budget. They also pointed out that because the Thames is tidal, when there is a overflow, it takes over 2 months for this sewage to leave the tidal river as it keeps getting pushed back upstream. In 2004 more than 10,000 fish were killed by this type of pollution. The predicted effects of climate change meant increasing frequency of incidents, and the sewage system was already over a century old. Thames Water insist that this is a necessary project to protect our river and keep it clean for all to use and enjoy.

The project being at a very early stage there will be further consultations, with the full planning process beginning in 2011 at the earliest.