S E W A G E

A NARROW PUBLIC HEALTH SQUEAK

What is sewage?
Sewage consists of all our human wastes carried by water from sinks, lavatories and baths in peoples’ homes, shops and cafés, together with wastes from farms, industries, offices and power-stations. It is 99.5 per cent liquid and 0.5 per cent solids.

INDIFFERENCE LED TO A NEAR DISASTER
The WC or Washdown Water Closet was a great idea for combating cholera in 1851 when the then total residential population for the 3 south east counties:- West and East Sussex and Kent was 752,610: Kent with two-thirds of them, included Bromley and other districts now part of London. To stop the epidemics Local Authorities took to providing alternatives to throwing lavatory wastes into open street drains and small streams; they began building underground drains to carry the liquid wastes into rivers or directly into the sea. The systems held up until the middle of the twentieth century: soil carts were still collecting lavatory wastes in parts of inland towns like Nottingham until the 1950s.

BRIGHTON SEWER IN USE SINCE JUNE 1874

Photograph by courtesy of Royal Brighton & Hove Museums

By the 1970s the perpetual movement of the sea and the power of the sun could not safely transmute and neutralise the amounts of wastes washed into it along the south east coast. By 2006 the population in West Sussex was 970,800 in East Sussex 506,200, in Kent 1,634,600 and still rising.Tourism has become the chief south east coast industry bringing in additionally millions of visitors.

POLLUTION OF THE SEA Dirty or polluted water stops the sun’s rays from reaching sea and river beds; without them plants and wildlife die off; the whole cycle of life is upset: they cannot absorb particles of Carbon Dioxide, C02. Sewage, however, contains “nutrients, nitrates and phosphates,” zooplankton and larvae live on them; so do certain kinds of algae, especially blue-green algae which flourish in warm weather to the point where they use up so much oxygen that fish are suffocated. Not only do dead fish pollute, bacteria are attracted to the dead and dying algae, contaminating the quality of the water, the eutrophication process. In summer, seabirds, mainly gulls, are brought to carers paralysed by poison not only from rotting food we leave about in towns, but also from polluted sea water.

Testing the Purity of Sea Water: The first big acknowledgement that human wastes were polluting the sea came not from individual Governments but from the European Community. In 1976 it issued the BATHING WATER DIRECTIVE, laying down limits for harmful bacteria and pollutants, the legal MANDATORY LIMIT and the higher GUIDELINE LIMIT as a desirable goal.

The assessment of sea water quality on this basis depends simply on “the luck of the draw” as the then National Rivers Authority agreed in September 1993 at an East Sussex County Council meeting at Brighton University.

A bathing beach off which sea quality reaches the Lower Mandatory Standard of cleanliness receives a Green Flag; if the sea reaches the Higher Guideline Standard, the beach is awarded a Blue Flag.

LEVELS OF SEWAGE TREATMENT: Four levels of sewage treatment have been established:-

1. Preliminary screens out only large solids, grit, plastic and other non-biodegradable items;
2. Primary improves physical and/or chemical settlement of solids not already removed: it meets the EU Bathing Water Directive by reduction of suspended solids by at least 50 per cent and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) by at least 50 per cent before discharge into rivers or sea, leaving a sludge;
3. Secondary takes out more organic material, using bacteria to remove those that are biodegradable; it also reduces the amount of ammonia, metals and oils: was used until recently mainly for rivers;
4. Tertiary Treatment sharply reduces bacteria, now said to be by 95 per cent, and also lessens viruses which were not included in the EU 1976 coliform counts.

Photograph by courtesy of Wessex Water

The treatment most likely to be familiar to the public is one of the Secondary methods in which filter beds of coarse gravel or aggregate are coated with bacteria on to which rotating arms trickle sewage; the resulting sludge is deprived of oxygen to assist its decomposition. The bacteria, however, require further large amounts of oxygen; they eat up the nutrients, especially nitrogen and/or phosphorus, cleaning the liquid and increasing the oxygen which nourishes wildlife when it is finally discharged into rivers. On coasts the sludge was habitually dumped in the sea until the EU banned the practice as from 1998.

Averting a National Disaster

Directives of the European Union, as the European Community is now called, have to be agreed by governments of member states, including our own. They are binding on those governments and have to be implemented within an agreed time limit. So the body which now really determines the cleanliness of our fresh and inshore waters is therefore the government of the day.

The Government’s problem was that, by the 1990s, the cleaning up of sewage to the set standards required a huge amount of capital investment. Its response was to shift responsibility from public local authorities to private companies. Companies would not have accepted the burden if they had not been promised chances of making large profits.
So in 1989 the UK Government handed over sewage, sewerage systems for dealing with it and the maintenance of fresh water quality standards up to drinking water level to private water companies for the country’s various regions. There are two categories of these companies:-

a) smaller companies providing water only, grouped in the National Water Association;

b) larger water plus sewage companies: the one for the S.E. coast is Southern Water, now a division of Vivendi, a French multinational.

A 1989 study finally published in 1994 of 16,569 holiday-makers at 10 beaches, showed those who went into the sea, particularly surfers and divers aged 15 to 24 years, suffered more health problems than people who did not: the higher number of cases of diarrhoea among them were related to total coliforms and enteroviruses. In a concurrent study of 1,112 volunteers at 4 beaches, gastro-enteritis was related to faecal streptococci at chest depth. HMSO Report No. DoE 3412 (P) Feb,1994 also obtainable from the Water Research Council Publication Unit.

In response to growing unease, south east coastal counties set up Coastal Forums partly in adherence to Government and European Union policies. Through them officials consult with local bodies concerned about the marine environment such as the Save Our Seabirds Charitable Trust. In this way ordinary people have a means of helping to raise the standard of their marine environment. Even more directly through an East Sussex County Council STATE OF THE ENVIRONMENT REPORT, also published in 1994, they contributed in a representative household sample survey of people aged over 18 years; 93 per cent were “worried about the contamination of beaches and bathing water by sewage...”

The British Government in 1989 set up a special body to carry out sampling and see EU standards of water quality were applied, the National Rivers Authority. In 1995 the NRA along with H.M. Inspectors were absorbed into a pollution control section of the Department of the Environment. Work started to upgrade Preliminary to Primary Treatments. The Water and Sewage companies’ staff came from the only people who knew the job, those who had been dealing with sewage for the Local Authorities. The service had been so ignored that as Southern Water employees, they were glad of any public interest including Save Our Seabirds Charitable Trust thorny pressures for urgent improvements.

With systems so badly run down, the Government also consulted its own appropriate bodies, such as English Nature and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on which stretches of coastal water should be classified as “sensitive” and so eligible for Tertiary Treatment: a 4-year research programme was begun in 1993.

Because of very high coliform counts, the NRA forced Southern Water to divert sewage from 4 Kent towns, - Herne Bay, Ramsgate, Sandwich and Deal, - to inland Secondary Treatment plants on the River Stour so that the sewage was cleaner when decanted into the sea. Southern Water had to instal Tertiary Treatment plants on 40 south east river systems.

Southern Water Services Environmental Activity Report 1991/92

The first target set for Southern Water by the National Rivers Authority was to clean up the inland river systems. Accordingly Southern Water installed over forty inland TERTIARY TREATMENT PLANTS, cleaning up effluent to the highest available level.Only after that did the NRA and Southern Water really focus on cleaning up the sea.

Southern Water issued a leaflet to tell people how to help to reduce pressures on sewerage systems and rivers and the sea into which they discharge: they are still giving the same advice today: Southern Water and the other Sewage & Water companies run a “Bag it & Bin it!” campaign with official backing. Their updated instructions are:-

Southern Water ascribes swimmers’ complaints about oil in Peacehaven-Saltdean bathing water to large numbers of Brighton fish & chip shops and hotels decanting used cooking oil into the sewage system.

Photo by courtesy of Southern Water

The new Eastbourne area Sewage Plant. Along the south east coast there are brick towers built as look-outs for a French invasion fleet during the Napoleonic wars. Southern Water followed this tradition by having the plant designed as a Fort. Treatment was raised from Preliminary to Primary but space was allocated for proceeding to the next higher grade, Secondary. Pressure is now on to have it raised to Tertiary as population is increasing.

Many South East Coast towns have populations over 10,000 and estuaries like the Medway, Newhaven and Shoreham have populations of over 2,000. All of these qualified under this Directive for Secondary treatment: most urban sewage is now treated to that standard.

The Environment Agency decides on what it considers “safe” amounts of effluent to be discharged into rivers and tidal waters of the sea to 3 miles out from low water-mark. It does not insist on the highest possible quality of water “but sets conditions for permitted discharges of sewage and trade effluents...” taking account of the nature of the effluents and of the receiving water to accept them. The permissions it issues are called “Consents”.

People wanting to apply for “consents” have to submit samples of effluent and information on legal results of breaking them.

Companies under pressure from growing urban populations are recycling saleable grey water, not only for use in gardens, parks, golf courses etc., but are cleaning up sewage ten, or twelve times to accepted safe standards for drinking water.

New methods of sewage disposal have been developed, e.g. instead of the wash-down water closet (WC) there are composting toilets, like the Swedish “Clivvus” model for use on outdoor sites, camping, sports grounds, beaches. They are in use domestically in the village run by the Centre for Environmental Technology, Machynlieth, near the Powys coast in north west Wales.

THE NECESSITY OF TERTIARY TREATMENT – THE HIGHEST LEVEL: There is world agreement that the only really safe level of treatment for sewage discharges is TERTIARY.

The Save Our Seabirds Trust and Surfers Against Sewage have continually demanded that ALL effluent should be given the highest Tertiary treatment. The financial cost of raising it from Secondary to Tertiary level is much less than the earlier costs, some £2 million as compared with £50 million in raising Primary to Secondary.

Bi-valves, - shell fish – accumulate impurities from water. So Tertiary is provided at Whitstable, Herne Bay, Margate, Broadstairs and at Chichester to protect the oyster beds. However, more commonly eaten mussels, whelks, scallops and other sedentary shellfish are not protected. Scallop fishing particularly has become more important to fishermen hit by EU restrictions on traditional species: according to the Sussex Sea Fisheries District Committee scallops are found away from the shore (and the polluting discharges from land) near the 6-mile inshore fishing limit.
For closed lagoons the highest ultra-violet Tertiary treatment is obligatory so it has been provided for Dymchurch and New Romney whose discharges are not made into the open sea, but into closed lagoons on land.

THE AWFUL BLOT ON THE SOUTH EAST COAST:
Brighton & Hove conurbation with a resident population of over 253,000 plus some 8 million tourists per year, in 2009 is still treated only to the most basic Preliminary level of mashed up solids. It contributes 80 to 85 per cent of the total 95 million litres of effluent emitted each day to which is added wastes from the small neighbouring communities to its east, - half of Saltdean (the other half being in Brighton), Rottingdean and Peacehaven.

Brighton beaches have been preserved from resulting pollution because a Tory County Council some years ago ordered a 3km disposal pipeline to carry effluent out to sea; only the conjunction of an incoming tide and an easterly gale would bring it on to Brighton shores.

Raising the treatment to Secondary level has been delayed by Brighton & Hove’s secession on 1st April 1997 from the East Sussex County Council which has responsibility for disposal. This Preliminary plant is on the Peacehaven coast at Portobello: Peacehaven has a District Council under the authority of the East Sussex County Council which apparently did not raise the question of location for an upgraded plant when Brighton & Hove won the status of an independent Unitary Authority, equivalent to a County Council.

Because of pressure to comply with EU Directives, national and Local Government have been pressing for an improved plant. Southern Water has been putting forward plans. An early suggestion was to upgrade the Portobello plant. English Nature (now Natural England) turned it down for the aesthetic, but not environmentally sound reason that it would spoil the coastline. A structure designed to fit in with the locality like the Eastbourne one, might have proved acceptable. Various other proposals were turned down until, in the summer of 2008, the East Sussex County Council agreed a Secondary Treatment plant on the Downs directly behind the commercial, cultural and local government centre of Peacehaven.
The Save Our Seabirds Trust has opposed suggestions at Public Inquiries. It seems unjust for Brighton & Hove to burden a small community with less political strength with disposal of its wastes. We are anxious about how much damage the work of building the agreed plant will do to the fragile chalk Down.

And we are not happy about the reduction by almost a half of the pipeline out to sea – 1.8km as against the present 3km. It is intended to have diffuser holes towards the end of the pipe so the effluent is not all deposited in one dollop on a radius of about 13 metres at the end of the pipe as at present. Is there not a risk that an incoming tide and an easterly gale would wash some of it to the Peacehaven, Rottingdean and Saltdean beaches?

The Present Peacehaven Portobello Preliminary sewage plant:

Photograph by Terry Stubbings, SOS Trust

The start of the 3km outfall sewage pipe from the present Peacehaven Portobello plant marked by the traditional marine sewage outfall sign:

Photograph by Terry Stubbings, SOS Trust

Proposed Year 10 Summer: View South West:

Photographs reproduced by kind permission of Southern Water

A Southern Water representation of the appearance of their finished Peacehaven plant. The County Council has insisted that it must merge into the landscape with grass covering its roof and shrubs round about. Local environ-mentalists have fought against it because it has set a precedent for industrial use of the Downs.

The planned invisible outfall pipe – only 1.8km long with diffuser holes towards end to reduce gradually the impact of the total discharge on the sea bed.

Also Secondary treatment converts 50 per cent of “solids” into fertiliser pellets which Southern Water sells to farmers. Every spring and autumn for 4 months in a year lorries emanating C02 will be transporting the fertiliser sacks through Peacehaven residential streets with a school nearby, to the busy coast road. The extra traffic risks, the noise and exhalations of these lorries were the main reasons Brighton residents turned down any proposal to have the plant in their urban area. Had the plant been on the coast, SOS argued that a small harbour could have been built for boats to take the sacks along the coast to various harbours, Newhaven, Shoreham, Rye, - with nearby railways for transport to inland stations from where farmers could collect them; boats carry more than lorries, would emit less C02 per load and do not create accidents or noise.

Residents led by the Peacehaven Residents Organisation Against Urban Development PROUD: have insisted that wastes should be transported through underground or submarine pipes along the coast westward to the new Shoreham works which it claims has plenty of space for the extra load.

Photograph by courtesy of Southern Water

RECOVERY OF OUR TOP PUBLIC SERVICE: With population growing, mounting public unease at numbers of people falling sick as a result of sea sports and leisure swimming provoked official fears of neglect of sewage disposal: it took 10 years before the start of implementation of the EU 1976 Bathing Water Directive: people’s complaints revealed the sorry decline in cleanliness of our waters. Independent non-governmental bodies like the Save Our Seabirds Trust and Surfers Against Sewage, whose members were affected, demanded action. The bulk of the public, however, still do not like to think about sewage disposal; out of sight in underground tunnels, discreetly piped into rivers and the sea, it is also out of their minds and those of a number of Local Governments they elect. Local Councillors, keen for election, do not see it as a great vote-catcher; it did not attract sufficient allocations of money for maintenance, let alone for improvements.

Since privatisation in 1990, Southern Water estimates some £3 billion has been spent in its area from Kent to Hampshire (see map p.5) for making sewage disposal and water safe: according to Southern Water Billing Department, for the 5 years 2007 to 2011-2012 a further £1.6 billion is due to be spent. These costs are met by individuals, businesses and industries, paying bills for daily usage of water in basins, baths, lavatories, plus costs of maintenance and building. The inclusion of the costs of what each individual knowingly uses seems to make the wider costs more palatable. While public authority and privatised prices for usages, maintenance and new building would presumably be similar, as private company subscribers, users are also contributing to private companies’ dividend funds and to their shareholders. So be it, so long as safe sewage disposal and provision of drinking quality water are provided.

What comes in and what goes out Wastewater samples before and after the treatment process

Photograph by courtesy of Southern Water

The second factor in stopping the slide was and is the staff: the bulk of them had to come from the old Local Authority enterprises, as they were the only people with the necessary expertise and experience. Disheartened by years of inattention, they have made good use of the new funds in the difficult battle to repair and improve the systems.

It is just as well that consumers have accepted the new owners, for, with Government legislation to back them, the private water companies have pretty well cut them out of consultations on the daily running of the business. The 2003 Water Act limited direct contact between members of the public and the private sewage companies. Neither the Environment Agency nor Southern Water managements are transparent despite a certain amount of publications and a commitment under the 1995 Environment Act to provide “clear and readily available advice” on sewage and water works. Students are admitted to study material during office hours, but they must book in advance as library space is limited. Information is available on the internet: (http.www.environment-agency.gov.uk) and, on local matters from Local Authorities. Southern Water has to publish annual reports, in which, however, it does not give details of the allocation of its finance. Rising population increases the need for people’s attention, for not sitting back and accepting EU parameters of cleanliness: sea sports are a growing attraction.

When Southern Water moved to Primary Treatment, it built in space for Secondary, expecting the standard to rise; they claim now to be building in space for Tertiary Treatment in new plants like the one at Peacehaven. Current and advance publicity of Tertiary Treatment and new technologies like converting sewage into methane gas, energy being in short supply, would be reassuring.

Beneficiaries are not just human, but the whole marine ecology from sea-bed to seabirds, dangers as well as delights. A Weaver fish in the shallows at low water; if you stand on it, it will stick a barb in your foot, so watch out!

Photographs by Pippa Oliphant

Little gulls, summer migrants, two with their summer plumage, black heads. The herring gull on the right is diving to snap up a fish.

Scientists are increasingly warning of the sea’s deterioration. The sea is so vital to us in many ways. Saving our planet requires acknowledging our responsibility for preventing not only sewage, but all the other kinds of marine pollution.

The US National Centre for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis led a study on human impact on the oceans. Published last February it found some of the worst areas round the British Isles: the north Atlantic off Scottish and Irish coasts, PARTS OF THE NORTH SEA AND THE CHANNEL !