Sunday 7 August 2011

A bit of healthy debate (it's better than nothing...)


Tuesday, 02 August 2011

RE: your anonymous correspondent’s views on the “super sewer” (Letters, July 22).
The writer says that there are “alternatives that would appear to me not to have been considered” and then goes on to suggest stopping “the discharge of our own excrement into the current sewer system”.
He/she immediately undercuts their own argument by admitting that this would create another problem: How would we get rid of that waste?
To put the problem delicately, that “waste” has to be moved so that it can be treated in order, as they put it, to ensure a cleaner river and produce high-quality fertiliser. However, I don’t see that the super sewer is incompatible with any of this. They then indulge in what I can only call a flight of fancy by proposing that “all the current water closets in the capital [be] replaced by vacuum sewer systems or a similar technology”.
Taking into account the number of private households, institutions and places of employment in London, the number of water closets that serve these places must be in the hundreds of thousands at least.
Replacing them would entail a project which would make the super sewer look like a tea party. Furthermore, can he/she explain what happens with the transition arrangements, with regard to waste disposal, when somes places have the new technology and others do not?
I share what appears to be your correspondent’s dislike of Thames Water as a privatised authority. However, that makes no difference to the problem at hand: London’s sewage system needs expanding. The work necessitated by that will mean inconvenience for some but the long-run benefits that will be created for everyone far outways this short-term inconvenience.
Glenn Meredith Leylang Road, New Cross, published in the South London Press

To this, I had reply the following:
Just some points that I would like to comment upon after Glenn's reply to my previous letter:
  • The super sewer is incompatible with the idea of recycling our waste since, same as it happens now, it can't be recycled once it is flushed down: it simply gets too diluted for it to be re-used in any practical way. This is why the only thing they do with it is to incinerate it.
  • The task of 'upgrading' the water closets across the capital will not be an easy task, but building the super sewer is not either. It is clear to me that this project is causing more and more protests due to the huge inconveniences that it will produce. Given the choice, I very much rather go for the option that will imply a more sustainable future.
  • I am not an engineer and I could not possibly comment on the costs or practicalities or replacing all the water closets in the capital. I understand that there is now a commission created to discuss the possible alternatives to the tunnel, and my hope is that they will study the feasibility of the option that I propose. The super sewer is to me a non sustainable,quick and expensive short term fix.
  • Regarding the 'transition arrangements', the replacing of the current system could be done progressively, creating first local collection centres, and then fixing the households in the area with the new system which will connect directly to the collection centre, although as I said earlier, I am not an engineer and don't know on the costs or practicalities or replacing all the water closets.
  • All this is much better explained by the article from the Low-tech Magazine of September 2010 on recycling human dung, (web link already referred to in my previous letter to the editor). I think that anyone interested in the issue should read it before commenting/ criticising the idea. In any case, I am happy to see that at least we agree on one thing: something needs to be done about it.

No comments:

Post a Comment