Figures released today by the Environment Agency have revealed record amounts of poo being disgorged into the Thames as a result of the rainiest November in years. I can't reproduce the entire table here because its a cumbersome spreadsheet but the key result for us is that a record 12.75 million cubic metres of untreated sewage flowed into the Thames during last month.That in volume terms is the equivalent of 3401 Olympic size swimming pools, or 129 Albert Halls.
That's a lot of poo. And it's perhaps one more reason why the white flag now flies over Hammersmith Town Hall, and the Thames Tunnel - or Super Sewer - is here to stay.
I think our Conservative Council has played this about as badly as they could have done - ending up with even the Conservative Mayor against their campaign to stop the tunnel is evidence enough of that. Their performance at this meeting was probably in hindsight their last stand, and Shaun Bailey's performance on telly last week-end was probably about as good as he could manage under the circumstances.
But it's not all their fault. Lest we forget, now that a beautiful park in our borough - Furnival Gardens - is going to be lost as a huge borehole is sunk to start the tunnel, Thames Water could have been building this tunnel in land right next to the park that they owned. But they chose to sell that disused pumping station to property developers to be turned into penthouse falts instead at huge profit. So a clever local politician might now be thinking about getting central government to insist that Thames Water pay for this tunnel themselves, or at least a very large proportion of it. Otherwise we lose our park and get hit in the pocket too.
[...] ultimately to stop so much raw poo being flushed into the river. This happens very frequently as these figures showed last year and is also the reason why the UK is about to be fined by the EU for polluting the river [...]
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