900,000 hours of human sewage and rainwater flow into UK rivers in just one year - revealed
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- Опубліковано 22 січ 2020
- Untreated sewage is being released into rivers across England and Wales - perfectly legally - and campaigners are calling it a 'dirty little secret'.
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This programme has now obtained exclusive figures showing how often and for how long it's happening. Water companies are allowed to release a mixture of rainwater and sewage through special overflow pipes during spells of heavy rain - but we've discovered that during 2018 - there were 140,000 spills, lasting a total of 900,000 hours.
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Firstly. Why on earth are people flushing condoms down the loo?! Secondly, why are people flushing baby wipes. Some people are so stupid and/or selfish that they don't deserve this planet.
chipko, many companies who make wipes, mark them as “flushable” even if they aren’t suppose to be flushed.
I agree! For decades we've had campaigns telling people that wipes aren't flushable.i find it hard to believe that someone who ignores billboards, leaflets through their door, endless television and radio features is disregarding all that because of some small print they found on a packet. They're just lazy and selfish.🤷
@@goodwifelucy5602 you lovely human :) i cant believe this is still happening (the non flushables) and the raw sewage in our waterways and seas
I once taught someone responsible for a waterworks here in Germany. Apparently the British water companies are infamous for lack of investment and high costs. The problem is multifaceted, including many leaking pipes which leads to an increase of bacteria in drinking water requiring further chemical treatment.
Ultimately the solution would be renationalisation of the water companies followed by large scale investment. This would require a tax increase but given the UK has some of the lowest taxes in Europe it is about time. Imagine if voters cared about such issues when they elected their MPs?
By the looks of the focus groups on this channel, a large number of voters are barely able to find their backsides if their hands are not tied behind their backs.
Exactly, look at how many water main bursts they have, the infrastructure is crumbling.
yes that's what Labour proposed in the last election. You can't move in London without seeing a burst watermain being repaired by Thames Water, who pay no corporation tax. But never mind all that! We simply MUST leave the EU at all costs
Thomas Ullmann without this the water will overflow into your home.
Lowest taxes? I bet you do not include council tax, vehicle taxes, and taxes on fuel.
I didn't realise that the UK was an underdeveloped country dumping sewage right into waterways.
Proves again what an utter sleazeballs there are in parlement
Thank Conservative government :)
B L without this the water will overflow into your home.
No, we are a developed country (in other words we dump sewage into the waterways but we have a permit).
Uk infrastructure is among the oldest, it was built as a combined sewer system which is why the sewage goes in rivers. The alternatives are;
1. Replace all sewage pipes with separate runoff and sewage systems
2. Toilets backing up when it rains
Companies or municipalities cut corners by combining storm and sanitary sewers and again by not increasing waste water treatment capacity. 9 months per year of discharging is criminal negligence and a crime against their communities (it’s also disgusting).
Joeleoleo Fishface without this the water will overflow into your home.
Without CSOs your toilet will be flooded from the pressure that is used to force the 10,000 pound CSO doors open. You will have a forceful flooding and drown within seconds
Its been a very long time since any new combined sewers have been laid, maybe renewed yes but built new combined systems, mis information and and usual fanatism
I didn't know these kinds of things happened in developed countries.
They probably don't but we are talking about UK afterall.
Well you didn't listen to the video then. This isn't something that's happened over night, these sewer systems were built over a hundred years ago when the population of the UK was a fraction of what it is now. The way we use the land has changed too and I speculate that rain fall levels could have changed - just throwing that out there as a possibility. These kindsa of projects can be very costly and there is possibly more short termism due to privatisation. The water authorities possibly have more focus on providing water given that there is a danger that demand will surpass supply. There a droughts to be dealt with too. Shouldn't happen but you can understand how it could...
Welcome to Brexit Britain 😁
@@zigowl1193 The UK isn't even out of the EU yet and you're already blaming random unrelated issues on it. You people.
@@internetguy8075 since the architects of brexit have been running the place for the last decade, I think it's reasonable to predict what is to come.
After all, this is the Britain which chose them and brexit. Why are you being so sensitive?
You may trust this bunch of incompetents, but I sure don't have to.
😁
She really doesn't sound like a regulator. She sounds like a public relations person sent out by the private water monopolies. So, I'm guessing her de facto role is the latter...
I work in industrial factories and we would be in court if we were over flowing untreated directly into a river. How do they get away with this? It’s the UK, it’s going to rain - put in place a plant that will cope to at least make these once in 2/3 year events rather than regular occurrences.
All water companies should be banned from discharging any untreated waste into our waterways. They should be forced to reinvest every penny of profit into improvements or they should be nationalised again.
Privitization leads to pollution.
No this release of raw sewage into rivers was licenced by the Environment agency before and since privatisation, but the cost of water to the consumer has increased dramatically without that increase bring fully invested in the infrastructure because of privatisation.
noisettes choco without this CSO, the water will overflow into your home. If you want I will turn off a CSO I will flow sewage into your house
This is disgusting. This is illegal in other countries. They have had to build holding tanks to deal with old sewage systems overflowing. Then the waste water is treated and discharged.
Its happening in lots of countries even with publicly owned systems. But the CSO's aren't the problem, they serve an important element of preventing floods and back ups, it's the water companies which are the problem not investing properly. Also consumers should stop flushing things that shouldn't go down, when sewers become blocked they back up and they begin to overflow into the relief chambers that are located along the course of the sewers, there's some videos of the Fleet sewer in London by Valdigger and it shows these overflow Chambers, the Fleet sewer is CSO and has interceptors along it, it enters the Thames a few hours per week, however there's lots of these along the Thames and the tideway sewer will address majority of the overflows.
This has been going on for decades, but the privatisation of the publicly owned water companies in the 1980s has made things worse. All they really care about is profits for their shareholders. The publicly funded Environment Agency simply don't have the resources to monitor all the rivers and to tackle all the pollution incidents. The water companies, in effect, purchase licenses to pollute and frequently exceed their permitted limits for effluent discharges.
"Are you really swimming in that river?" "No, I'm just going through the motions..."
CatholicSatan without this the water will overflow into your home.
People pay water companies to treat waste water... Corruption is rife.
Not a mention of the huge profits being generated by private water companies for their shareholders. Why would bills need increasing to upgrade infrastructure when investors are profiting? This is not investagative journalism, you need to dig much deeper and ask far more awkward questions for that.
This business should be nationalised. I'm cancelling my direct debit.
14,000: The number of times Wessex Water released untreated sewage into the natural environment between 1 January and 31 August 2021, equivalent to 107,731 hours of discharge.
Disgusting. 🚽
THE WATER COMPANIES HAVE HAS 150 BILLION POUNDS IN 30 YEARS AND ITS NOT BEEN IMPROVED ONE JOT, MOST OF THE MONEY GONE INTO SHAREHOLDERS POCKETS OR OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS
Lovely jubbly. The real Britain today, and forever.
Jai Ganga, Maha Deva 💩
@@hmsdefiantKeep Defiant
90% of all English river have raw sewage
It has been like this for a century.
A good river these days is hard to find, a good river...... the lasting kind....
England Is Overpopulated!!!
ROBERT CURTIN Oh please. England isn’t overpopulated (400/km2).The Netherlands isn’t even overpopulated (512/km2). They’re densely populated, but that’s not an excuse to let sewerage flow into the rivers. Get your country in order and built sewer sanitation plants that have enough capacity to deal with an overflow of rain. England is used to a lot of rainfall. It’s just underbudgeting of the water boards.
.
it’s trespassing
and if i don't get moving soon I will get covered in poooooooooooooooo
@@robertcurtin7368 with what..stupid people? don't be so hard on yourself
thank you Mr sharky...
helen wakeham."you do not manage rivers to swim in" if one would not swim in it then it`s not fit for wildlife.!
i`m from Norfolk and anglian water have been found guilty many many times of mismanagement yet here we are 2020 and the same thing is still going on.!! and what do we still hear "yes you are looking into the problem"..
the problem in England is lack of will, the money exists to make education,health and conservation a thing to be proud of. and on the flip side of all this is YES we all need to come together to be part of making our country a better place. take your blinkers off take your hands out of your pockets and be conscious that you can make a difference.
Have they done anything about the PAH that is leaching into the water supply in Norfolk, I bet they haven't.
As long as shareholders are well provided for, the odd turd, is just one of them things ..
You only give half the picture here as the issue is much worse successive years or minimal rainfall requires the water companies to back up the levels of waste water in the pipes lest they should dry up block and ultimately fail...this is done rather than structurally reconfigure the pipe work...in short they should really lay new drains to cope with today's expected rainfall and weather patterns...so basically the sewers are already backed- up and an sluice is holding back an mass of waste as the engine driver of the system...thus when it rains suddenly and heavily the overfilled sewer system releases it's toxic cargo into rivers ponds and water course...the only solution is an engineering one where we recalibrate the pipes to accommodate today's weather not the weather of over two hundred years ago when the original pipe bed was laid out...its take huge investment to do this bit if you fail then you are forced to live with the toxic and potentially deadly threat of strengthened human waste not only in rivers and watercourse but finding it's way into your city streets atmosphere your drinking water supply your food chain and ultimately into your body...
I have been wading in a river fishsand had a floating poo come past me! Every other snag is a baby whipe , some places stink of sewage! Its disgusting tbh
This is why compositing toilets are ideal.
And if you live in a flat???
This is what happens when you let corporations profit from public utilities. The Tories would privatize their own grandmothers...
Well said.
Ridiculous that getting rid of our waste is privatised, of course they are only interested in shareholder profits. That’s what investors do.
Cholera outbreak will set things straight!
now we've left the EU our inadequate environmental regulations will be even weaker. Good one, Britain
This is the elephant in the corner that no-one is mentioning. Years of Tory rule with their decimation of the public sector and a climate that encourages minimum investment for maximum profit in the private sector coupled with no European bodies able to step in and enforce Europe wide standards mean that this will continue to get worse.
Mark- I've spent half my life in that river
Cameraman- pans to floating used condom.
@10:45 This problem in the UK has been known for quite some time. The EU commission and European Court of Justice in 2012 called for the UK to address this polluting of rivers as they have. Get Brexit Done!!!!
Does the UK have an equivalent to the Deep Tunnel project in-place in Chicago, Illinois and it's suburbs in America?
Please explain how Brexit is going to reduce the tons of sewage in British rivers. The budget for that department is already settled, only enough money to maintain status as is, no funds to reduce the sewage into rivers.
@@sallyforth2955 Sorry, I failed to indicate sarcasm and sadness. It seems officials don't feel obligated to speak truthfully. If a dog is not safe going through a river, then signs should be posted everywhere.
sally forth without this CSO, the water will overflow into your home. We have mass produced 170 million automatic 230kg CSO outfalls just this year. ua-cam.com/video/I1w6hDII6rA/v-deo.html we are at this point selling them for 50 pounds at a time due the great amount brought.
The environment agency being their usual helpful caring selves. They reinvest very little and do very little to help the environment. They’re only interested in the revenue from allowing water abstraction, allowing the release of sewage and taxing users of the river.
Why is the regulation not higher? Installing filters or spillway system should be the minimum. Having a mechanical filter should be fairly easy to install.
The present cost will easily be covered if water was nationlised.In fact,there would be enough money for the needed improvements.Privatisation will be the doom of Britain.
I feel like I missed a course in sewage terminology
I watched the whole video with a vomiting face like I was ready to get sick in every single minute
Oros without this CSO, the water will overflow into your home. If you want I will turn off a CSO I will flow sewage into your house
This is regrettable.
I can't believe something like this would happen in a 'developed' country. That is such a health risk - even viruses such as Corona Virus get carried by sewerage - there would be so many other diseases, viruses, etc in that water. This situation is absolutely unacceptable.
Charla Ville pinkie perky without this CSO, the water will overflow into your home. If you want I will turn off a CSO I will flow sewage into your house.
@@robbieesayersprofessionalc9114 You keep posting that. Please can you explain further?
@@portcullis5622 Many sewer systems in the UK carry both sewage, and rainwater from streets and houses.
Water treatment plants can only handle so much waste water coming in at a time. So during times of heavy rainfall, their plant can't keep up. This causes a sewage backup.
Currently, when the sewers start to back up, they overflow a specially designed barrier (usually underground) and then flow out through a pipe to a river or the sea.
This is done to prevent the sewage from backing up to road drains and causing sewage flooding in our homes and streets.
It's only done as a last resort in situations where there is excessive water volume.
If we threaten the water treatment plants with fines or legal action every time an overflow happens, they might decide to block the overflow, and instead allow the sewage to overflow at the source (basically in our streets and basements).
@@dancoulson6579 The private water companies have permits which allow them to pollute rivers with raw sewage up to certain limits. Limits which they regularly exceed. Even if caught, they usually receive nothing more than slapped wrists.
@@portcullis5622 Coming late to this topic as a long term expat. My take: privatisation of a local or regional monopoly, profit and shareholder returns, lack of planning and appropriate investment, and a seemingly detached government agency are some of the factors that cause this dreadful situation.
Water management demands massive infrastructure and attendant costs. Like other privatised infrastructure, water should be returned to public ownership and public accountability.
Wow...lots of excuses. At least could capture the solid waste at each outlet to diminish the impact. So sad the want of money takes precedence over wildlife and human life.
Quite strange the government goes on about air pollution and not one mention of this and it’s visibly polluting
And two years later in 2022 there is no improvement
Yes this has been going on for YEARS
How do steam turbines generate electricity? and clean river water!!!!
Making electricity from steam is generally a three step process, involving: 1) Converting water to high pressure steam 2) Using the high pressure steam in a steam turbine to rotate the turbine shaft 3) Using the rotating turbine shaft in an electric generator to generate electricity In most cases,
What were the promises around public services privatisation?
Better services, more efficiency, cheaper...
The usual con, the usual lie, as we discover today that greedy shareholders made cuts around used water treatments and dropped sewage directly in rivers and sea.
The head news was: Unprecedented apologies about the VOLONTARY pollution made for pure profit. Sorry guys; we keep our jobs, we keep our bonuses, we are just sorry, and by the way the build of the infrastructures needed will be reported on YOUR bill... let them pay, cease the profit and finance the infrastructures with their profit they can’t pay? JAIL!!! JAIL or JAIL!
Those people should be in court, the shareholders’ dividends ceased, those people should be in jail and the companies nationalized again to become again with better services, more efficient, cheaper... they lied, they polluted for years, and now they show us the finger.
Where were the controls from the state? Did they turn a blind eye on it? Did they knew?
Purely disgusting.
….and it’s now June 2023 and it seems to me that it’s taken 3 years to get the water companies to commit to changing anything.
Same old…same old…
We measure sewage in hours now? What is an hour of sewage? 900 TCPMs (turds and condoms per minute)? The world’s gone mad 😕
No, it just means we don't know how much sewage is being released it the waterways of Great Britian. The rainwater is flushing raw sewage into the waterways through overflows but at what rate and mixture is unknown. So it's given in time. Even a small amount though can have terrible effects on native fish species. A world where a good, honest, hardworking british dad can't take the kids fishing at the weekends anymore is indeed one that's gone mad.
Human Potatoes sally forth without this CSO, the water will overflow into your home. We have mass produced 170 million automatic 230kg CSO outfalls just this year. ua-cam.com/video/I1w6hDII6rA/v-deo.html we are at this point selling them for 50 pounds at a time due the great amount brought.
How disgusting ! No control !!!
It's not just stuff that shouldn't be flushed but normal poo going into our rivers. Stop blaming everyday consumers and fix the problem
I love to swim in raw sewage, I LOVE IT!
Good then you have plenty of choice.
Look up the story of Halifax, NS and the wastewater problems there. The mayor took a swim in sewage for the cameras!
Plague island. beeuuurkkk !!
Funny, no one is mentioning that dirty word. Privatisations and lack of investment = poor outcomes of nature and people the longer it goes on.
AND TWO YEARS LATER....
morning removed 19 sacks of plastic rubbish, and 12 sacks of aluminium cans from my local river bank this week. help keep your local areas clean,
good for you
Well done.
Recycling plants needs to build so sea water can be cleaned
Nice video
3:06 I bet one of my big floppy turds got on him 🤣, Go Turd Go lol.
Higher water prices? What about lotería share holder premiums?
Cholera outbreak is gonna happen
Government take from all this will probably be that we need more investment in biodegradable condoms. 😁
👏👏👏 Dirty BIG SECRETS of 2 yrs ago... 🤫🤫🤫 This is precisely why they have been wanting to get rid of Channel 4 !!! 😡
They should prob invest in RTBs like Detroit Mi in the US.
the water companies made what 60 billions in dividents ? so the managers and shareholders have the money ...thats why there are none for investmants
Who the fk flushes condoms. I just put in the bin ffs. Or put in anything. Fk flushing it, thats more effort.
Lesh go swimming kids!! Don't forget ya drink bottles.
well done
£70/120 fine for dropping a bit of litter for us mugs
perfectly legal to pollute our rivers and lakes for them
absolute joke.
They gonna blame Brussels for that.
How do we speed up depopulation/carbon reduction now covid has failed...
And then some of these rivers have pipe lines into drinking water reservoirs and bore holes next to the rivers.
Some areas abstract river water, but it is treated and mixed with water from other sources before it goes into supply. A bigger problem is the negative effect of biological oxygen demand that it creates and the destruction of fish and habitats and the effect on ecosystems. Not to mention the effect on human health either directly through swimming in it or through eating fish and shellfish
Hey channel 4 pls say yeti in sphaggiti next time on the news
Fergal sharky is a freshwater sharky
Hours?
Overhaul, if you had a problem like this in a house you'd rip it out and start over. 🤦🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
What's up with this guys red suit? Is he a Power Ranger?
It's a dry suit for diving soft lad
Ok, missed that part. LoL
As long as we keep making water and energy and travel the responsibility of profit driven companies us the country and nature will come 2nd
Not nearly equal time for Mr Sharkey compared to the Enviroment spokesperson, whats up with that?
"It's EU's fault"
It is!!-
Unfettered immigration!
What did they think would happen if millions of immigrants was let into the country.
So wtf are our taxes doing apart from being sent directly to ukraine
Poor Clare, what a s**t assignment. Literally.
Finally we are a free country. The corpos can do whatever they want.
Wasn't that Brexit about ?
Who are the cretins putting condoms, wipes and sanitary towels down the toilet?? Are we going to have to ask schools to teach people how to use indoor plumbing now? We've had decades of campaigns telling people how much extra it adds to our bills removing this rubbish.. and yet?
Wetwipes is the worst , people just to lazy , nappies is a huge problem as they change there kids and flush them
Fines won’t help water companies, money will. these are combined sewers, a now obsolete and environmentally insensitive system. These outlets known as CSOs are to relieve the combined systems during hydraulic overload, if i was put in charge of this outlet, I’d erect a system called a CSO retention tank, which will fill up and slowly release the waste into the CSO treatment plant interceptors, greatly reducing the chance of pollution.
If extra money is out forward to water companies then they will be able to construct a CSO interceptor, politicians seem to not know what to do.
Delayed penalties, delayed enforcement of regulation. Debt increased by £14billion over 30 years. Dividends paid over the same period were £7billion. It isn't politically palatable to increase water bills to cover the true cost of water treatment which includes putting money aside for and servicing the debt for investment in infrastructure and not just under maintenance of current system.
Politicians seem not to know what to do…….you surprise me.
Who wants to go for a swim? I know the perfect location! 💩
Hours of human sewage!! Will it be litres?
Is this reporter trying to look like Mary Portas?
0:26-0:38
3:18 excuse me whats up with that picture :D?
Some random brochure/presentation image collage.
This problem should be reducing hopefully in the future now Julian Assange has been moved to HMP Belmarsh
How to get to a third world country status, just because you want blue passports.
It was always like this since Victorian age sewage planning.
What good does it do to solve the sewage in the rivers if you society and politics are full of the sewage concept of royalty and entitlement. So primitive.
Rainwater getting into rivers? We have to put a stop to this!
Exactly what I was thinking, lol
The storm and sanitary sewers are combined so the brown trout being released aren’t actually fish.
The rainwater is flushing raw sewage into the waterways through overflows but at what rate and mixture is unknown. As it's given in time by the companies. Even a small amount though can have terrible effects on native fish species and good, honest, hardworking british families won't be able to take the kids fishing at the weekends anymore.
Any chance of a update on controlling the swage ?
who gave permission for this ?
and the folks that gave permission are still employed and not fired for giving permission to kill our river and beach's ?
"who gave permission for this"
😂 This is happening for decades!!!!!
This story is a real stinker
more to the point how come the water companies are so in debt but pay out big money to shareholders and keep putting bills up for me and you where do they find the money. and would sooner pay the fines than solve the problem I used to fish the whye river now the only thing you would catch is a turd
Why do you not report the news anymore. Why are you covering up or your not reporting the religion of the grooming gangs
Water UK,
water balloons. if there are and there may be some sort of Lot of Blokes that really have less to do with their time and wont Go any IS off like that they still water might gander the water dirty IT bee and balloon that water and throw them balloons and there be a mess of water that is dirty and a balloon made of plastic that will take a Very Long time to turn into dust and all that dust to dust stuff.
Jesus Christ. She must be public enemy number 1 at the moment. Or should I say Number 2.
Where should it go? It is going to find its way to the aquifer no matter where you put it.
Do what a lot of other countries do, which is put sewage water through a water recycling plant where it filtered for all those various things like sanitary products, biological and chemical pollutants, until it is found clean enough to be let out into the natural waterways. To not do so is a huge risk to human health as well as to the environment. Unsanitary conditions like these are the prime conditions for the spread of dangerous diseases.
After they Separate the water from the poop what do they do with the poop? A ha!
@@lillytaggert178 make choco. :)
Lilly Taggert without this CSO, the water will overflow into your home. If you want I will turn off a CSO I will flow sewage into your house
@@lillytaggert178 it is used to make fertiliser or gas
The Tories have to go. Disgusting.
The sewer route UK uses is from Victorian Era
Nothing new
Brexit means we can set our own low standards for rivers and beaches! Brown flag?
@K MT Rubbish shitpost, Al. Even stupiderer than usual.
o. @K MT Rubbish shitpost, Al. It's your own too. You are aping me.
@K MT Rubbish shitpost, Al.
Putin gets his raw sewage posted to the internet! Cue K MT snapping back!
muh russian bots