HS2 sewage pumped into green belt river
RAW sewage from a major HS2 building site is being sent into a protected river, it has emerged.
Millions of litres of polluted water could have entered the green belt river Colne via an already overwhelmed sewage treatment works.
Campaigners say the Maple Lodge plant should never have been contracted to dispose of waste from the high-speed rail project.
They claim water bosses knew it was overloaded.
Thames Water allowed HS2 to begin sending waste for treatment at the Hertfordshire plant from August 2021. Last April, it agreed to increase the maximum permitted amount by 50 per cent.
The facility is believed to have discharged sewage five times already this year
– the most recent incident lasted 121 hours.
Untreated sewage is sent directly into the river when the plant is swamped, usually by heavy rain.
The discharge point is monitored by Thames Water, which must send on the data to the Environment Agency (EA). Ex-Undertones pop star-turned clean water activist Feargal Sharkey, 64, accused the EA of failing to ensure adequate infrastructure was in place for HS2. He said: “It’s another grotesque example of what the Environment Agency calls regulation. “A decade to prepare, hundreds of meetings and all of it ends with yet more damage to a wonderful river.” Paul Jennings, ofthe nearby River Chess Association, said: “You’re approving effluent going into an already failing sewage treatment works. That’s got to be wrong.”
Thames Water takes waste water from the South Portal site in southwest Herts, where HS2 is boring a tunnel beneath the Chiltern Hills.
Record
Much of the waste sent to Maple Lodge is human sewage – up to 1,000 people work at the site.
HS2 can also send “excess effluent” from its tunnelling and concrete batching, as well as “contaminated” surface and ground water.
But when the Trade Effluent Consent was agreed by Thames Water, Maple Lodge already had a record of extensive sewage discharges. In 2020, it sent waste into the river for 1,109 hours across 83 different incidents.
HS2, which can send up to 1.5 million litres a day into the local sewer system, said: “Water from our site represents less than one per cent of the volume of the capacity of the Maple Lodge works.”
Tony Booker, of the Colne Valley Fisheries Consultative, said: “Dress it up how you like, but HS2 is sending waste to a failing treatment works that’s discharging it into the river.”
Thames Water said: “We regard all discharges of untreated sewage as unacceptable and will work to accelerate efforts to stop them being necessary.”