it’s a huge issue that doesn’t get fixed by digging up the road and putting new pipes in. On top of the fact that much of it is a combined system a lot of the infrastructrure is still Victorian. Brick culverts etc.
What is happening is that there’s a massive drive towards local disposal of surface water into soakaways and the like. Basically keep it out of the sewers, but it only scratches the surface as most roads etc will have drainage that discharges into the sewers. And that’s another issue on its own. Surface water from roads is horrible in it’s own right, full of petrochemicals and other real nasties such as arsenic and more. It builds up in the silt in chambers and shallow sloping sewers.
When I worked in Reading we knew of a network of culverts running under the city but had very little idea the extent of them, where they could be accessed and where they all were basically. With a little bit of spare budget every now and then we would try and find and get a look inside one. We had confined space trained people. They simply couldn’t get into them. There was 2 foot of silt in the bottom of them and as soon as it was disturbed the gas monitors would start screaming. There is miles and miles of this under the streets and houses of Reading and I suspect that reading isn’t an isolated case.
There’s a major task in simply identifying all of these culverts, where they are, where the access points are and ultimately cleaning them out. There are just no records
2 Likes
The monsoon is keeping us afloat, ironic, considering it also floods large swaths of the country. Sadly, silting up of the riverbeds and dozens of dams upstream means there’s low waterflow during non-monsoon months.
ultimately it needs to be done though.
obviously the major town centres would be a logistical nightmare, but new estates or rural areas would be a good place to start.
what they need is a few tories owning a few civil and infrastructure companies…that way itd probably recieve sufficient funding tomorrow.
2 Likes
It is happening with new build - where possible at least in Wales. Sometimes its physically not possible due to the local geology.
Another issue is that sometimes there’s physically no room to stick another pipe in the road.
Basically I think it ultimately comes to building more capacity with sewage plants.
Worth noting that this isn’t a unique problem in the UK. Investment in our infrastructure is years behind. It’s a like a ticking time bomb.
And again politics is failing. In most cases local maintenance has been passed to the local authorities (except for rail and major highways) and we all know what has happened to council budgets.
2 Likes
Extinction Rebellion seem determined to alienate a whole swathe of people who might otherwise support their campaigns.
1 Like
(… ) The world’s wealthiest 1% produce double the combined carbon emissions of the poorest 50%, according to the UN.
The wealthiest 5% alone – the so-called “polluter elite” - contributed 37% of emissions growth between 1990 and 2015. (…)
2 Likes
That’s a very ambitious target.
Some potentially good news coming out of the Biden administration:
4 Likes
People in New York asked to stay at home because of the smoke (and fine particles) caused by the big fires on the West coast and in Canada… 
state of emergency has been declared here in British Columbia. State of emergency for wildfires. Note that my region is actually classified as a “temperate rainforest” but hasn’t had rain in 5 weeks. our forests are tinder dry. Company owner may lose his lake home in the Okanagan to a fire nearby to it, and due to the evacuation notice he cannot go there to retrieve any of the contents, including a few of his race cars.
That’s an interesting idea. Not sure how practical it will be considering we aren’t dealing simply with a train on a static track, but we do need to think outside the box for the solution to lorries and the current limited capabilities of being powered by clean energy.
If they managed to get something like this working with small on-board batteries for the last leg it could be a game changer.
One massive issue with this is bridges. If this happens then you’ll need a whole new raft of training for people that will work on maintaining bridges. In addition they may need to raise the parapet fences to stop people lobbing stuff over onto the wires. That may mean a whole lot of strengthening work required to take the higher parapet fences.
Not against it but as with anything from Boris I doubt it’s been thought through.
2 Likes
Why not simply invest in railways? The technology is already there. Ripping up the railways was a terrible decision.
2 Likes
If there is spare capacity to run freight on the passenger prioritised rail network, then there are still large number of hurdles but none insurmountable. Surely less insurmountable than rigging overhead lives to every motorway, A and B road in the country.
Most of them would relate to cost which itself would be alleviated just by moving the majority of the freight off roads, which (road haulage) currently accounts for 90%. But think about poor rail networks not suited for freight, triple handling to make the start and final journey, organising for capacity to be full on return journeys, trains coming to a halt with a dusting of snow, minimising running half empty containers. These are road blocks currently.
Trains at present aren’t exactly an efficient way of shipping Amazon packages around the country. More for long haulage of bulk quantities of things. That would need to change. But that change could only happen if backed by the government - better funding/ incentivised move for the haulage companies.
2 Likes