New Water

One excuse given by water companies I’ve read about shit being dumped into our rivers is that the Victorian system of drainage which mixes rain water and shit and when there is excessive rain it overflows into rivers.

So I was thinking… if water and sewage collection had never been invented and you were doing it from scratch today, what would the system look like?

The obvious starting point is a separation of sewage collection and rainwater. Sewage goes off for treatment, rainwater, from Roman to Victorian times, was left to dump out into streams. Now however, due to environmental collapse, we need to collect it for a number of reasons, one being that it doesn’t fall evenly and even in a place like the U.K. it needs to be moved from where it falls to places where it doesn’t fall to avoid the hosepipe ban that this rainy island gets every year. Another is that in times of excess rain when the sewage system is overwhelmed is when excess, including shit, goes into the rivers.

So two networks. Rainwater collection and storage, and sewage.

Coming back to the sewage network we’re obviously talking about households. But a vast amount of pollution comes from animal sewage. Large industrial herds shit constantly and farmers put on blinkers to pretend that it’s not really ruining our rivers. Animal sewage is also used (and abused) as a fertilizer, over spread onto fields which then run off into rivers. Its happening at such a rate that our rivers cannot cope, they are dying.

So the question is, should the sewage network also collect animal sewage? I am torn on this question, because actually I think large animal herds are unsustainable so we shouldn’t be worrying about their sewage, we should instead be reducing the herd. But I am going to say that we should also put animal sewage into the same system. This then means that the sewage treatment works then treats this sewage as well as producing fertilizer for land. This in turn means that the fertilizer becomes a mix of human and animal sewage. This is less uncommon that we may think. I believe that it’s the norm in China, and if not there, North Korea. So it happens. It’s a slightly disgusting thought, but one I think we could get over if you didn’t notice any real difference in the food. Maybe this fertilizer becomes something that can be sold. Who knows.

In terms of sewage treatment, the rule would be (and always should have been) that none of it is put into water courses. The system needs to have the ability to add capacity in line with population growth. It might be okay to put sewage into the sea when the population is 1 million people. Not when it's 7 billion and increasing.

So for now we’ve dealt with shit, there is a system of pipes from homes, to a central sewer, to central treatment works. The only difference to now is that it’s a closed system and does not take grey water from houses or rainwater from outside.

Grey water from domestic use is things like bath water and washing up water. With this, I’ve already paid for it to come clean as drinking water out of my tap, so really I want a system that collects it and maybe does a simple cleaning treatment on it for me to use again. Maybe I can water plants and a garden with it. Maybe we can get it clean enough so it can be used to flush toilets without spoiling the white porcelain aesthetic we’ve become used to.

So this means each domestic property needs a collection system, cleaning system, and method of returning it back into the system. This is easier said than done. What if I poured fat into the sink. This is now in my grey water system. Can you water plants from this, or from washing up water? My understanding is that you can, but maybe not constantly. I’m not sure if there is water treatment that can be easily installed and maintained in a domestic setting, but I would have thought that this is possible. The water doesn’t need to get back to drinking quality, instead it needs to be cleanish and useable for gardening and toilet flushing. But this would still involve some level of filtration and cleaning. In perfect conditions you should be able to fill a swimming pool with this water and not have any concerns about how clean or clear it is. I think with our technology, this is possible.

So this means a house would still have fresh drinking water coming in as it does now. No change there. And it does need a new route for sink and bath water to take that does not immediately dump it into the sewer but captures it for domestic treatment. And along side this, houses and gardens exposed to rain can also capture that and feed it into the same system. This system needs to be able to feed out to the toilet for flushing, and a garden tap or a specific grey water tap for accessing when gardening, car washing, or other uses when pure drinking water is not needed.

Outside of domestic settings we have the need to capture and clear rainfall to avoid flooding of towns and cities. This currently falls and goes directly into the sewer. It’s this system that can be overwhelmed by rainfall. This does not stop flooding but it does affect where sewage ends up. So here we need a grey water pipe that continues to collect the water along with any overflow from the domestic grey water collection.

My understanding currently is that our drinking water mainly comes from this surface water via reservoirs and rivers. Therefore we need to increase the number of reservoirs we have to collect more of the water that falls from the sky. We should collect everything that falls onto roads in cities and get it back into the reservoir.

The other thing we need to do as a country is ensure that areas of high rainfall can push water out to areas of low rainfall. There is no point in allowing excess water to flow out into the sea because of overflow when there is a hosepipe ban elsewhere in the country. Pump water from high rainfall areas to low. And pump more before heavy rain is forecast to increase storage capacity.

This requires a national plan and I would suggest, a publicly owned national water company.

It feels like there are some big differences to now.

1 is the total isolation of the sewage system from grey water. That’s a cost obviously and would involve relaying pipes nationally. That’s big disruption.

2 Another is having domestic treatment plants in homes for grey water. That’s also a cost but one that would be offset somewhat by less water usage for some people.

3. New reservoirs and a national grid for moving water. This is a cost, but given that we get a lot of rain, just not in the right places, it seems to be something we should have addressed 20 years ago.

In a heating planet water will become one of the resources over which tensions will rise. As an island with good rainfall, its something we should secure for future generations. This is not something you can do if your sole purpose is profit and maximising shareholder value. Putting shit in the sea maximises shareholder value.