Ozzy Scott
Well-Known Member
I can't speak from scientific exploration, but I can speak from my own experience.
I live quite close to a major river, and most of the towns and villages in the county and the surrounding counties are either on this river or on smaller rivers that are tributaries of this river. In the past 20 years, every small town and village has seen the end of the septic tank system and the development of sewerage treatment systems - all of which feed treated waste into our waterways. You could call me lucky, but I have managed to work on the construction of some of these systems locally and I have seen how they work and how they are supposed to work.
To put it very simply, these systems consist of a number of filters which remove the solid particles in the sewerage which is then landfilled while the liquid part is discharged into the rivers. There is no process in place to remove the Nutrients from the liquid that is discharged into the waterways.
Second to that, all of these treatment plants are built in close proximity to rivers. One system, that I was involved in the construction of and I know someone who is responsible for maintaining, has flooded every year since its construction. This flooding has seen all of the solid materials in the system at that time being taken out into a major river. We don't hear any reports of this and we don't see any figures in water analysis reports which details this.
My local town of 1000 still doesnt even have a treatment plant, luckily its beside a river that flows into the sea in about a mile. I assume all testing is carried out up river from this town.
There should be a mandatory ruling that all abstraction of waters for industry and towns should have to take place down stream from where they are discharging what ever treated water they have. Its would clean up our waterways at the stroke of a pen and cost little.