How one town prevented rainfall from overwhelming its sewage system
SIR – The problem of excess run-off from high rainfall (“Water companies are dumping raw sewage into rivers 1,000 times a day”, report, February 14) was solved in Milton Keynes by the construction of large lakes to hold the water until conditions allowed for it to be released into the river system.
All of the lakes were able to host activities, such as wildlife conservation, water sports and fishing.
Inclusion of smaller versions of these should be encouraged in new developments.
Richard Selley
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
SIR – Is there a reason why water companies cannot be barred from paying bonuses and dividends until they clean up their act over the discharge of raw sewage?
Surely the clamour would concentrate their minds actually to do something, rather than keep on paying fines and not resolving the problem.
H Gelder
Rugby, Warwickshire
SIR – As a chartered surveyor who has worked as a town planner for the last 50 years, I can reassure readers that surface water (rainwater) from new developments is not piped into the foul sewers and thus the sewage works.
Building regulations require that surface water from roofs and hard paved areas is directed into the ground, normally via soakaways to the aquifer but sometimes via ditches or a stream to the nearest river. Building inspectors check on this.
The problem is historic, as this used not to be the case. It would require an enormous programme of work to alter all Victorian and early 20th-century houses with combined drainage.
The sewage works suffer two problems. More housebuilding means that more foul effluent flows into the works, and periods of intense rainfall mean that, at those times, more surface water flows into the works as well, overwhelming their ability to cope.
Excess is then released into rivers or the sea; the alternative is that it backs up in the pipes and comes up in the houses and gardens.
Given the quantity of foul sewage release that we are hearing of, it rather sounds as though the problem is not the storm flows but a simple lack of capacity at the sewage works.
R T Britnell
Canterbury, Kent