Sewage in our river

As you know if you were in the Bush it rained hard this week, and as Thames Water told us at this meeting, this generally means that raw sewage from as far afield as Camden and Brent flows through North London, into our part of west London and then into the river. That's when we're lucky. When we're not lucky it also flows into houses in Hammersmith. This is because the Victorian sewers just can't manage the sheer volume of rain plus toilet flushes.

As I type this Thames Water and other authorities are currently trying to deal with a large flow of poo that flowed into the river following the rain on wednesday this week and is currently merrily sitting in the river right next to our Borough. The authorities are trying to use peroxide and other chemicals to disperse it but its still there at the moment.

This rather makes the case for the new sewer that Thames Water wants to build, the Mayor of London has told them to build but that our council has demanded be stopped. I just wonder how our council are going to find a face saving way of climbing down on this one, as they catch the whiff of something smelly from the windows of Hammersmith Town Hall.

This is a current status update from the Environment Agency: (it wouldn't win first prize in a plain English competition but you'll get the drift. As it were)

This event is  possibly  a combination of Mogden Storm Tanks and CSOs and that is why the sag is quite wide.  Rainfall over West London forced Mogden to go to river on Tuesday afternoon, and the storm sewage was dosed with peroxide as it coincided with low water.  The central London CSOs also went to river.  Both discharged again Wednesday evening as a result of the heavy rainfall, but not at low water.  

Estuary temperatures are falling (16 degrees), and that might be why the sag is developing slowly.  I had hoped that things would pick up over the course of today given the sunshine, but that has not been the case. The sag is now now below 25% saturation, falling slowly.
Further rain is forecast for Friday afternoon to Saturday evening which might be interesting depending on the state of tide.

FW flows are not fantastic - until the evening of the 7th around 10 cumecs - the rain briefly raised it to >20 but this has now returned to 10.