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At least half of the Thames Water sewage systems are missing the pipes and tanks to process enough wastewater, which, according to the company’s own data of untreated wastewater, spilled over its network in rivers and waterways.
Around 181 of the 351 sewage systems of the utility company did not have enough capacity last year to treat incoming material, with some of the quantities required by the residents.
The company that serves a quarter of the United KingdomThe population did not provide any data for about a third of their plants, which means that the total number of locations that do not have enough capacity and therefore spilling waste material may be much higher.
Mark Hull, a water economist at Oxford Rivers Improvement Campaign (ORIC), which used environmental information requests to collect the data from the company, said the results were “shocking”.
“A century after wastewater treatment in larger cities, Thames Water does not have enough hydraulic tapping capacity to cope with the streams arriving in our sewage work. . . This leads to an increasing flood of wastewater in our rivers, ”he said.
The data also show that the number of locations that wastewater pour into rivers for more than 38 hours a week – almost doubled between 22 and 40 between 2020 and last year.
While wastewater outflows increased with heavy rain, Thaames’s own results showed that there were also long discharges Dry years As in 2022. Oric said that “treatment could be superficial” or “important parts of the works can be flooded regularly”.
The WAT supervisory authority was given the approval of increasing the average budget calculations by a third to 639 GBP from this April to invest in its network.
Although the company promised to use earlier price increases to finance improvements in 108 sewage treatment plants-intake in an impact on the largest non-Londonian work in Oxford-, the work that should begin until this year at the end of the decade.
Data made available to Oric Don’t know When the secondary wastewater capacity in the Oxford plant was improved – something that has restricted the building permit for thousands of new houses near the city.
The Network of the State of Thame – including the lack of information about a large part of its system – hinders the company’s efforts to increase the financing in order to ward off the insolvency administrator.
The company has to find new owners and invest in its infrastructure and at the same time invest its 19 dollar -debt.
However, potential bidders have given the lack of information about the condition of the infrastructure and the risk of fines and other unknown costs, according to several people with knowledge of the process.
The company has already been exposed to a fine of 104 million GBP from OFWAT because it does not manage its wastewater treatment network, while it is also examined for delays in improvement.
More than 30 percent of the Thames’ Wastewater is not assigned while the company has already warned that it has it £ 18 billion £ aging assets This represents “a risk of public security, water supply and the environment”.
Although the construction of the wastewater networks in the Victorian era began, most treatment plants were built in the 20th century – with a significant expansion of capacity during the period after war periods and in the 1960s and 1970s, when the water suppliers were still nationalized, and under the local authority Control.
Thames Water requests a judicial approval for A £ 3 billion loans From his existing lenders to surprise it until it can find new owners for the company.
The company has also closed treatment work. Environmental information inquiries from Financial Times show that Thames Water has sold or closed at least 45 work in the decades after privatization, which reduces the number of 398 works to 353 to 2000 in 1990 and only 351.
Thames said: “We are responsible for the oldest and most complex infrastructure of a company in the sector and recognize that we have to make investments in order to meet the requirements that are associated with population growth and climate change.”
It is said that this year’s price heating would “provide a record of investments to combat our aging infrastructure in the next five years”. It added that “we continue to carry out our plans to update over 250 of our websites in the region”.
