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Sewage pumped in local waterways by 22 out of 27 treatment works on Tuesday
21/06/2023
Only 4 local facilities coped with Tuesday’s rain
Tuesday morning’s thunderstorms once again overwhelmed many of our local water treatment works.
Of the 27 Thames Water facilities in the Banbury FM area 22 were pumping raw sewage into our local rivers and canals.
Only four of the area’s treatment works managed to cope with the amount of water arriving.
Water containing raw sewage was bypassing treatment works via storm drains and passing directly into the Boddington Canal, the River Cherwell, the Bloxham Brook and Kings Sutton stream.
Over the last year the Bloxham treatment works has been one of our area’s worst performing.
In January Thames Water told Banbury FM they had work planned to increase the volume of incoming sewage water treated by the Bloxham works. The company was hoping to finalise this work this spring. They said this should result in the amount of sewage being discharged into the river being “greatly reduced”.
Banbury FM asked for an update on this project. A Thames Water spokesperson said: “Taking action to improve the health of rivers is a key focus for us and we have planned investment in our local sewage treatment works to reduce the need for untreated discharges, including Bloxham.
“We regard all discharge of untreated sewage is unacceptable, and it’s understandable why the public are demanding more from water companies to do better.
“We recently announced our plans to invest £1.6bn on our sewage treatment works and networks over the next two years and are striving every day to reduce the discharge of untreated sewage into our rivers. This will help us to deliver our commitment to a 50% reduction in the total annual duration of discharges across London and the Thames Valley by 2030, and within that an 80% reduction in sensitive catchments.
“At the beginning of the year we published an online map providing close to real-time information about storm discharges from all of our 468 permitted locations and this continues to be updated with information on improvements being planned for more than 250 sites across our region.
“Stopping discharges altogether will take time and sustained investment, however each step we take on this journey is a move in the right direction.”
Storm drains are used when the volume of sewage water arriving at a site is too much for the treatment work to deal with. Rather than the system blocking and backing up into people’s homes the storm drain is opened and the excess bypasses the treatment works and is dumped directly into the river.
Published: by Banbury FM Newsteam