The Thames Tunnel - an open debate

This is an open thread about issues surrounding the controversial Thames Tunnel proposal by Thames Water (link to TW FAQs).

To kick off an overview: The river Thames is increasingly suffering from pulses of raw sewage entering into the river after heavy rainfall. The problem is mainly due to the fact the combined sewerage system (CSO), which carries both foul sewege and rainwater run-off has become overloaded due to a combination of population growth, reduced surface permiability and the increasing effects of a changing climate, namely droughts and flooding.

The TT has been proposed as solution to this problem and it is hoped will avoid excessive fines being incurred due to breaching European directives on pollution (the UWWTD). These issues need to be clarified as the proposed completion of the TT would currently be around 2023, and substantial fines may still be possible until succesful completion.

Another issue relates to the cost of the proposal currently estimated at over four billion pounds. There is a possibility that the proposal entails excessive costs and may therefore not be an acceptable solution under the UWWTD.

Cheaper and possible more afffective alternatives to the TT may still be favourable in the light of this. These include SUDS, water saving schemes, and other measures right down to end of pipe approaches such as supplying oxygen to river water in so-called blubblers.

Finally the framework that resulted in the privatisation of the water industry is something that cannot be ignored. Is the supply and treatment of water not so fundamental that it should be state owned and run?

I look forward to your thoughts.

BTW. A useful website on the legal aspects of the TT relating to infrastructure can be found here thanks to Angus Walker.

BTW.

The water industry is an interesting example of what happens with privatisation. Decades of under-investment left the water and sewerage systems in a desperate state. The government of the day pleaded poverty and simply sold off the assets to private hands who stripped the best assests (mostly land, which was used for buildling houses in the housing boom) and made a tidy profit. They never solved the problem of providing enough water and sewerage treatment and here's the evidence:

The Thames regularly suffers from pulses of raw sewerage while this year a hose pipe ban is being imposed in the South East. And all this over twenty three years after privatisation in 1989. Thames Water reckons that by 2020 the thames will suffer a constant flow of raw sewage unless customers fork out a fortune to pay for the now 4.1 billion pound Thames Tunnel. Such are the wonders of private investment that they insist the tunnel is of national strategic importance and so should be partly paid for by the nation. The last time I checked, the Thames flows through London and not right through Britain.

So much for privatisation. Thames Water is now owned by an Australian investment banking group, Macquire after having been sold off by the German energy corporation RWE, also one of Europe's most polluting businesses.