Clean

©  2008  Rose George

I once met a wastewater treatment expert, at a wastewater treatment conference, whose name is Les. He works for a utility in the north of England. He had tales to tell, such as the idiocy of having to add phosphorous for treatment and then having to remove it again before the effluent is discharged (too many nutrients can damage rivers and seas). He said that sometimes, sewage effluent (the clean liquid produced by sewage treatment) is cleaner than the water courses it is discharged into. I remembered Les when I read this story about Australia, about an apparently now defunct plan to use billions of litres of recycled effluent to cool power stations in Melbourne. The second option was to discharge the stuff into the Yarra river, except that the effluent was too clean. Too clean! So scientists have been “investigating whether it can be “dirtied up” using nutrients and minerals to make it more suitable for river ecology.” The most likely scenario though is that it will end up in the sea, like most of the world’s effluent and sewage. Even more when it rains. This year, Britain’s soggy weather meant that two thirds of beaches had sewage contamination, compared to a third in 2006. Sewers can’t cope with both a growing population and rain. They’re designed to discharge untreated sewage when there’s too much water coming into them. It might be flawed, but it’s how the system works, because our Victorian forefathers decided on a combined sewer system - which takes all surface water from roads, too - not a separate one. I have a simple rule: After it’s rained, don’t swim in the sea for at least a day, particularly not if you spot a big pipe somewhere nearby (but some are underground). Unless you like swimming alongside cotton wool buds and condoms. Who knows? Some people might. Perhaps the same people who belong to the Yahoo group for wearing thigh-high sewer waders.