Anyone here heard of Boycott Thames Water or involved?

Wed 24 Jul, 12:28

That is exactly what those huge pipes were used for, although they were probably for storm drains too.

I recall that until 1998 it was the practice for the sludge from London sewage works to be loaded into euphemistically named "Bovril boats" to be sailed down the Thames Estuary to  point in the North Sea called Black Deep, about 15 miles from the appropriately named Foulness. There is now a giant wind farm immediately to the east of the spot.

When it comes to sewage farm overflows, one problem is there is inadequate separation of surface water from foul water drainage, a lot of it historical. New housing has had to be built with their own surface drainage via soakaways for several decades, but there is a huge legacy of older properties where that is not the case. To avoid heavy rain overwhelming the sewage farms, then what is required is major programme to better separate surface and foul water drainage systems. The relatively small discount given to households to have separated surface and foul water drainage systems is not really sufficient incentive to retrofit the necessary soakaways. Of course you can go further, with so-called grey-water separation, but that is really intrusive.

Tue 23 Jul, 22:11

I can recall huge pipes on the beach at Swansea Bay in my childhood.  I never asked what they were so thanks for the explanation Steve!  As the tide was out, I don’t remember going in the sea there fortunately. 

Tue 23 Jul, 16:45 (last edited on Wed 24 Jul, 12:41)

I would advise thinking twice about doing such things. Whilst water can't be cut off, the sort of debt agencies that this get passed onto can often pursue such cases in the courts (or at least threaten to), including recovering their costs. That can get very expensive.

Nb. it appears that Thames Water is now mostly owned by pension funds, including some public sector ones. Those who made their money via the leveraged buyout that landed the company with what are now some huge debts have long gone. The original German owners sold out to an Australian company (Macquarie) for £8bn, and structured a buyout leaving Thames Water with a lot of debt on their books. A consortium of (mostly) pension funds bought the shares on account of the return. Those same pension funds are facing a huge loss should Thames Water enter receivership. I think the biggest holder is the British university staff pension scheme. Apparently, since investing into these shares in 2017, they (and others) have not been in receipt of any dividends. The BT pension scheme management company (Hermes) is another one in the same position.

*** this is an update as, it was pointed out to me, I'd left out a very important "not" in the penultimate sentence of the previous paragraph ***

I should add that leveraged buyouts of companies owning core infrastructure of national importance is questionable.

However, before we get carried away by pollution stories, by far the biggest culprit was the government when it owned these very same organisations, as well as coal, power or sewage.  The beaches of my youth used to be festooned with pipes pumping raw sewage into the sea not far from the coast. It was said, when I was young ,that in Morecambe Bay you did not so much swim as "go through the motions".

Tue 23 Jul, 05:29

All I can say is that I now have them calling me as I have told them that they money for their water bill is in a separate account, and that they will be paid when they stop polluting our rivers. Of course they also handed back £billions of our money to their shareholders, and I complained about that as well.

If people wish me to keep them informed, I am happy to do so. In the meantime, if anyone else wishes to do the same, be my guest!

Now that we have a real MP, I wrote to Sean Woodcock saying that we need to be able to choose our water company in the same way that we can for gas and electricity. It's one thing for the water companies to pollute our rivers; it is quite another thing when they expect us to pay for the "privilege" of doing so.

Mon 22 Jul, 19:44 (last edited on Mon 22 Jul, 19:48)

Was startled to come across this letter (below) in the newspaper as I'd never heard of Boycott Thames Water and had been ignorant of the flat-rate surcharge levy being imposed on customers to payback the Companies owners losses (as the letter says, in effect a Poll Tax on everyone irrespective…

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