For seven years, thousands of workers and engineers have been working on the construction of a huge 25-kilometer tunnel, located under the City of London, to modernize the sewage system, which dates back to the nineteenth century, and stop the discharge of waste water in the area. Thames River.
The tunnel, 7.2 meters in diameter, meanders from west to east, following the curves of the river. The Giant Sewer, as it is known in the UK, will open in 2024 and be fully operational in 2025.
This is the largest modernization of the British capital’s sewage system since the second half of the nineteenth century. The total cost was 4.3 billion Egyptian pounds ($5.6 billion).
The drainage system was created by engineer Joseph Bazalgetti to put an end to the stench of 1858, when, in July and August of this year, high temperatures and sewage that came directly into the river impregnated the city with a stench.
In recent decades, sewage has been dumped back into the Thames due to the lack of sewage capacity to handle the overpopulation of the British capital.
Bazalgette’s canal system, a true engineering masterpiece of the time, carried sewage and rainwater, so that the former often flowed into the river.
– There is no cure –
“Every time it rains, even if there is a light drizzle, the sewage fills up and flows straight into the river,” says Taylor Gill of the Tideway construction company, which launched the project.
“On average, 40 million tonnes of sewage is discharged into the Thames without any treatment,” he adds.
The old brick sewers are still in excellent condition, but not large enough since the network was built when London had a population of four million. Today there are nine million.
The new tunnel will only direct sewage when the existing sewers are full.
The system will combine the mechanisms that will divert sewage into the new tunnel that was otherwise going to end up in the River Thames with the existing system.
“We will intercept and eliminate 95 percent of a spill,” says Taylor Gill.
“Once we’re done, the river won’t look much different, but it will provide a much healthier environment for the fish, marine mammals, and birds that live in it,” he says.
– Closed beaches –
The last stages of the establishment of this giant project coincided with controversy in the water sector, which was privatized in 1989 and accused of chronic lack of investment in its networks.
According to the government’s environment agency, last year sewage was dumped an average of 825 times a day into UK rivers and coastal areas.
On the Isle of Wight, on the south coast of England, several beaches were closed last summer due to high numbers of bacteria in the water.
The government announced this week that water companies and other operators in the energy and waste sectors will face heavy fines for polluting activities.
Thames Water, the company that manages water for the London region, which has 15 million customers, was ordered at the start of July to pay a £3.3m fine for pollution.
It is your clients who finance the “super sewers”.
For Matthew Frith, of the London Wildlife Trust, an environmental advocacy organisation, the new sewage system will make a huge contribution to restoring the Thames.
But, according to him, it will not solve the problem in other parts of the country.
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