Thames Water to datacenters: Cut water use or we will Thames Water is considering measures to cut down the water used by some datacenters, including fitting flow restrictors or charging operators more at peak times. Last year, the mega private utility company which supplies 15 million people with water, undertook an exercise to understand how much of the stuff is being used by …
We have arrangements with the Canals & Rivers Trust to draw off water, to use for cooling purposes and return it to the canal - on the condition that we don't return it above a certain temperature or with anything else in it that it didn't already have in it. With that in mind, there is a heat exchanger and pollution check on the return points to dispose of anything unacceptable.
The arrangement has worked very well for the last 60 years.
This is not difficult to get right, however, Thames Water getting anything right apart from lining the pockets of Macquarie at the expense of the environment is the only thing you can count on them doing.
I sit in an organisation not so far removed from stuff gobbled by Macquarie, and can somewhat libelliously say they are just asset strippers and have no right to be anywhere near critical infrastructure. They have absolutely no vested interest in long-term planning.
I'm not exactly a fan of privatisation anyway, but at least some private outfits ARE motivated by longevity of operation by design.
"Debts in Thames Water had gone from £3.2bn to £10.5bn by the time Macquarie had sold its stake, whilst paying out £2.8bn in dividends to shareholders during their time in control"
JEBUS!!!
"Macquarie noted that during its tenure Thames Water invested more than £11 billion"
Most of that has gone into the new London main sewer and didn't the UK taxpayer cough up a good chunk of that money?
Strictly, it's Thames Water customers, not the UK Taxpayer, that's paying for the Super sewer (Tideway).
That doesn't seem entirely unfair.
It also seems reasonable to note that however bad privatised Thames Water may be, they are at least undertaking the first significant expansion of the London sewer system since it was built to the design of Bazalgette ~160 years ago, and perhaps the municipal water authorities in existence prior to privatisation should have done a bit more.to expand capacity and replace pipes, so that we would now have few leaks or sewerage discharges to the river.
you do know that thames water was privatised in fucking 1989, that's 34 fucking years for them to have done something, fucking anything.
and the tory twat's told us the whole fucking point of privatising them was that they would actually do something, not fill share holders pockets with gold.
Yes (well, I thought it was 1990 from memory, but close enough).
My turn to ask a question - you do know how long it takes to plan and develop a multi-billion pound infrastructure project, involving a multi-kilometer long tunnel tens of metres beneath a major metropolis, with multiple surface access points? For the various options to be assessed, for plans to be drafted, ecological studies undertaken, intrusive ground investigations to be carried out, planing consents to be obtained, objections to the scheme to be addressed, for funding to be put in place, for enabling works to be undertaken, etc, etc?
Given that the tunnels are about done, but the scheme is not yet operational, the answer is roughly 25 years.
The Tideway planning started around 2000 (give or take).
So for about two thirds of the period you think they should have been doing something, they were in fact doing something.
Of course, that does still leave a delay of circa 11 years when they weren't addressing the excessive discharges into the river by developing the Tideway scheme - that would be the period when the number of leaks in the water pipes was actually being significantly reduced (BBC fact checked - I mentioned this in another post).
So (privatised) Thames Water has done more in the last 34 years to address water leakage and sewage discharge than the municipal company did in the previous 34.
It may not be enough, but if your measure is that you were told that the point of privatising them was that they would actually do something, the evidence is that you were told the truth.
"My turn to ask a question - you do know how long it takes to plan and develop a multi-billion pound infrastructure project, involving a multi-kilometer long tunnel tens of metres beneath a major metropolis, with multiple surface access points?"
I know, less than 10 years. Not only that, they built rails in said tunnel and called it an underground. 30-something years is three projects like that, from start to finish. And they haven't done even one.
"measure is that you were told that the point of privatising them was that they would actually do something," .. and they were lying, as usual. Management got ultrarich, of course.
Your example presumably not being in the UK.
The formation of Crossrail ('Cross London Rail Links Ltd') occurred in 2001 and it took until 2022 to get (partial) services running, so 21 years. The project also benefited from a fair amount of work undertaken in the early 1990's for an earlier version of the scheme that was being developed (initial route planning and some intrusive ground investigations etc).
In both cases (Crossrail and tideway) construction is circa half the total project time.
Similar timescales apply to pretty much any and every major infrastructure project in the UK (HS2, road schemes, bridges, nuclear power).
Macquarie has not been the owner of Thames Water for several years. They sold to OMERS (the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement Scheme) and USS (the Universities Superannuation Scheme) with some other shareholders (I think the Kuwaiti sovereign fund is another shareholder).
But I will agree with you on your view of the company. They definitely extracted their pound of flesh from TW while they had it, loaded it up with debt (when they bought it from Germany's RWE) and now leave the two pension funds to shoulder the additional investment needed now.
On the other hand, pension funds are more likely to be in for the long term with consistent and ongoing returns, not asset stripping for a quick buck and moving on to the next victim. If they don't have the regular income, they start to look like a Ponzi scheme with contributors cash going straight out to pay the claimants, a bit like State pension schemes.
Weirdly, it's both: price caps also mean less investment. Though I'm not sure if price caps were removed there would be more investment.
Basically water, like most of the privatised utilities, has suffered from poor and inadequate regulation since privatisation: water meters should have been made compulsory; companies measured on the quality of their supplies and waste water treatment. Instead regulation focussed mainly on making the companies more attractive to investors.
Water meters are definitely a good thing. Ask anyone in Africa how much it makes you realise how much water you waste. :-)
This bizarre standing charge concept that an entire street/town is charged on the basis of everyone's usage combined divided by the number of homes in it is mad. Why am I as a single person paying for the water usage of the average 4-person household in the rest of my street? I should only be expected to pay what *I* use, nothing more. If you're a wasteful family of 6 who run baths every day, washes their cars every other day, runs a washing machine load every day, has a swimming pool and a pond with water feature, etc, *you* should be paying for that usage, not your neighbours too by proxy.
> I should only be expected to pay what *I* use, nothing more.
The problem is that the cost of supplying you with water is >90% fixed costs whether you use a drop or not
So if there is no standing charge the rate/volume is going to be really high - screwing anyone with families.
Fortunately it benefits old people living alone, who vote, so expect the standing charge to go away.
Do you only pay for the bits of the road that you use? Do you pay for your own doctor visits in full and without recourse to socialised or insured assistance? Have you paid your education back?
Why are we paying for these things for you? Do you have kids? Those things are expensive! Why should we pay for anyone else's childrens' health and wellbeing?
I don't have kids. My taxes still go towards schools.
I ride a bike to work most of the time. I drive occassionally, usually not much more than 2-3000 miles a year.
I don't use the NHS much either, fortunately, though I would have been dead at 6 months old without it long before I could have had any say in the matter on how we fund the NHS. In the savage US system, I would probably not have survived short of family taking on crippling debt.
My taxes go towards employing 1-in-20 people in the UK in said organisation.
We never use the missiles on the ballistic missile submarines. My taxes go towards ensuring they are sailing around; putting off dictators from trying something.
People rightly whinge about "leninism" and it's obvious falilngs, however, there are plenty of favourable aspects to social democratic policies concerning essential utilities and public services.
But this was rather the point, I hope.
"This bizarre standing charge concept that an entire street/town is charged on the basis of everyone's usage combined divided by the number of homes in it is mad."
Whether you use only a small amount of water as a single person compared to family 6 in a larger house, make little to no difference the cost of providing the pipework to supply your home. That's what the "standing charge" is for. You are correct in that the use of a water meter would almost certainly mean you'd pay less overall than a large family but, on the other hand, water is a necessity so why should it not be paid for "socially"? You as a single person in a small property are not paying the same as someone in large house with a large family since water bills are based on rateable value of the property, ie if you can afford a big house, you pay more for your water and for the majority that works out relatively fairly.
Where I live we've had water meters for long enough for my original one to have worn out and been replaced. That was over a year ago.
The meters have always had a wireless connection (frequency band not known or displayed on the meter), which is good because the meter is in a cupboard in the kitchen, so the radio llnk means no meter readers tromping mud through the house on a wet day or me having to be home for their visit.
However, the other week I did have a visit from a water company rep to audit leaking taps, leaking taps and cistern's etc. I thought this was quite a good idea since it was free and that that he might spot any problems I'd missed. In the event the rep carried ID, was friendly and didn't spot any problems.
To get caps removed, the water companies would say they will invest more and also can be trusted to do so without any form of legal requirement to, and immediately aftwards would suddenly find lots of cash for dividends and invest a bare minimum in infrastructure.
Because that's what companies with shareholders do when not requred to do otherwise.
For us, the electric utility takes any profit and uses it to leverage into faulty schemes that are not even in the same state, much less the community. And when that goes to crap, we have higher rates to pay back the loans.
And the ones responsible don’t even lose their job and just do it again.
I think the Datacenters are missing an opportunity. Pipe from the coast, build a desalination plants, sell the leftover to the utilities. I could imagine the heat from the DC could also help with the desalination process.
"Weirdly, it's both: price caps also mean less investment. "
That's BS. Investments happen when management decides that those are needed and price has exactly zero effect on that: A major company having absolute monopoly on *water* can always loan infinite amount of money with near zero interest.
The *only* thing price caps do, is to limit the obscene profits management is pocketing. No more, no less.
Why invest and wait 10 years for profits when you can have profits *now*? That's what's happening, again.
Because it's so much easier to bill users to make more money than it is to pay out to fix the leaks
Not that I'm excusing Thames Water from being bloody awful(*), but they do have the problem that a lot of their leaks have this thing called London on top of (and around) them. Moving it out of the way so they can work on the leaks is a tad problematical.
(*) Thames plus a lot more of the water companies used to be customers of my company in the 90s, immediately post privatisation, and we got to see a lot of their problems. If ever there was a better use for the phrase "if I was you I wouldn't start from here" I've not met it. More recently my wife spent several years involved in regulatory oversight of a couple of water companies. Even on the occasions when they want to spend money fixing a problem, Ofwat(**) often won't let them. Add the positively surreal debt structures some of the companies suffer from, and the poor grunts who are actually trying to get us safe drinking water have my deepest sympathy.
(**) To say Ofwat is as inutile as a fishnet condom would be English understatement at its finest.
>but they do have the problem that a lot of their leaks have this thing called London on top of.
That's only a problem because they are still repairing water pipes the same way we were repairing water pipes in the 1950s. Technology has moved on in most other industries. There has been cock-all investment in remote robotic repair, directional drilling etc. that could make repair easy and cheap, because that would affect the shareholder dividends in the short term., even though it would pay back manyfold in the longer term.
>It comes in as drinking water and leaves as foul waste.
Only if you don;t flush your buffers
There are evaporators, they look very much like giant AC fans on the roof but they also blow enough air through that you don't get the condensation you would see from a power-station cooling tower
I too would be interested in how water is used and contaminated during the cooling process in DC's these days?
It's 25 years since I was involved in any form of data centre, and back then it was all closed-loop air handling with refrigeration systems.
Refrigeration systems obviously have nasty chemicals and environmental concerns, but are these modern data centres literally taking fresh treated potable water in, heating it up, then flushing it into the sewers?
If so, that is unbelievably environmentally irresponsible and these companies should be charged and fined millions (and refused planning permission to build in these areas). Maybe OK for a nuclear power station on the coast, or the banks of a major river with constant flow, but utterly irresponsible in a major city with existing over population and water shortage issues. A city where some folks cannot afford their domestic heating bills in winter and these guys are just flushing waste heat away for someone else to deal with,.
Even a closed loop water cooling system with external cooling/refrigeration would be a better solution. And there is a great big river running through London, with a never ending supply of self replenishing seawater to run through heat exchangers with just a little effort - not too much effort seeing as many of these datacentres are located in an area curiously known as "Docklands".
A couple of things (not that I don't disagree with your sentiments):
1. District heating has not been a thing in the UK like... ever. To implement district heating in areas where data centres exist would cost money. It would require investment, digging up roads and implementing things that were never planned for. You're right that large buildings (like many sky scrapers in Canary Wharf and the City) would benefit from district heating (and cooling, ironically), but because there was no provision made for such infrastructure, the chances of retrofitting this would be nil because the costs of retrofit would exceed the benefit from it.
In Germany and other countries, district heating is still a thing (hence notably New York still having major steam pipes running under the streets to feed the big buildings). You are charged by the therm you 'extract' from the steam feed.
And yes, the waste water could have heat extracted from it. Here's a paper about it: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2021/ew/d1ew00411e
2. Brackish water from the Tideway is not really suitable for cooling. All kinds of pollution in it makes it unsuitable. *However* treated effluent (i.e. treated sewage water) is because it's been cleaned for the most part, and could most certainly be used for that. See 1)
That said, there's a *lot* TW could do, but it requires investment, which, notably as per recent news reports, they can't really make because they can barely afford their debt payments.
We do have some district heating in the UK
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/07/residents-fears-grow-over-risks-from-district-heating-networks
However we seem to do the usual thing we do and balls it up.
Southampton had (might still have) a small system that supplied heat to some office buildings from a geothermal source. (The well was on the carpark of the old Toys-R-Us)
@anothercynic
"they can barely afford their debt payments." Yes but looking at the bright side, they can still pay good dividends.
PS: You wrote "district heating is still a thing", it's not going away, quite the opposite, for good reasons and I suppose you agree.
TW has not paid dividends in years. What is described as 'dividends' is transfers of money to the holding company Kemble, who are the entity loaded up with debt and who handle the debt repayments. It's described as such in their investment materials and accounts.
And yes, I'm very much in favour of district heating because it makes sense. But, as @blackcat said, there are problems with how district heating in the UK is managed. It's a) (mostly) unregulated because it doesn't fall into the classic gas-and-leccy concept of utility, and b) people don't particularly like the idea of being wedded to a single supplier for decades.
Implementing district heating the European way would most certainly have benefits given that the government is trying to sell everyone on heat pumps. District heating is just like a heat pump, just bigger.
A lot of the post war concrete mass housing development was centrally heated too. Certainly in London. But just like the shoddy build quality of the prefab concrete it rarely worked and no-one wanted to pay to fix it. I think that has left a bad taste with the older generations. And the grief with utilities in the last 20-30 years has left a bad taste with EVERYONE.
Dickinson street power station in Manchester provided district heating, as did Battersea in London and it appears Bankside was going to but didn't. The thing is people don't like coal/oil fired power stations right in the middle of cities any more. (don't blame them!)
With the advent of welded plastic pipes rather than screwed together iron and electronics for monitoring things should be a lot more reliable. As you say it needs proper regulations and we are f-ing awful at that.
But the reality is that people are wedded to the water company with no possibility of change.
The major problem is, as you point out, (a) because we can neither trust private companies nor the government to oversee them.
The notion of a 'public good' or 'public service' appears to be a long lost memory because it doesn't make somebody any money.
"I too would be interested in how water is used and contaminated during the cooling process in DC's these days?"
It comes into the data centre as clean drinking water and leaves via the sewers whereupon it heads back through the sewer network (along with all the, err, sewage) to the processing plant and turned back into drinking water again. Regardless of what treatment it needs, all waste water regardless of its previous usage is treated together. This is probably a lot cheaper for the data centre operator than building a closed loop system.
There's no mechanism in the UK water network for used water to continue straight for drinking with no process in between. And I say "drinking" because all water supplied through the network is clean for drinking, whether it's used for drinking, cooking, washing, toilet flushing or data centre cooling.
So water coming out of a data centre might still be clean and safe for drinking, but there's no way of sending it straight for drinking without some serious changes in regulations. And despite the criticism the water network comes in for about leaks, sewage discharges etc. the one thing it does really well is supply clean safe water everywhere, that's pretty much non negotiable. Under normal circumstances, tap water anywhere in the UK is safe to drink.
It's been proposed many times over the years that the water network supplies two types of water: one safe for drinking and the other not but still clean enough to wash, flush etc. The same for sewage, separating storm water and household sewage. Storm water and sewage travel along the same puppies which is why sewage discharges happen when it rains heavily and the sewage network gets overloaded with rainwater. This would save a lot on processing costs, but to change the whole UK network would be prohibitively expensive, so we stick with how it's always been done.
We looked at it for our rural location here in the colonies, where most people have under-sink UV+filter for well water anyway
Could the town filter but not fully purify the municipal water supply, and have people sterilise just the kitchen tap supply ?
The problem, apart from legal liability, was that even water for flushing the toilet, or showering can get aerosolised. Surprisingly this isn't too bad if it's only "toilet droplet cloud" (!) but is rather nastier if it has legionnaires or similar. We ended up with a supply that is chlorinated to cheaply kill all the nasty stuff, but still requires your own in-house filter system if you want to drink it.
@jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid
""and turned back into drinking water again"
I wonder if that is actually true.
Some countries are more lucky, of course, for instance the Nordic countries use very clean water from lakes and rivers (not sure about Denmark) and than that water is made even cleaner. Waste water is then cleaned before it's let into the Baltic
Could Britain be that different.
I was told a story by a shift manager at Sellafield of a time when their water treatment /pumping station which supplied the cooling systems on site with freshwater from Wastwater was being taken offline for maintenance. As you can probably imagine, they do lots of testing to make sure they know exactly what's in that water before using it in the non-radioactive side of the cooling systems.
They finally get some temporary pumps hooked up, and some specialist filter systems which were looked for all the world like road tankers, and start doing some analysis on the water going in and out of the filters.
Turns out that the lake water going in was so pure that it was cleaner than after it had been prossesed in the new filters, and so in a remarkable display of common sense, they did away with the temporary filters!
"I too would be interested in how water is used and contaminated during the cooling process in DC's these days?"
I would assume that because it's an evaporative process that the "waste" water has far higher concentrations of minerals etc than the original source because the cheapest way of doing evaporative cooling is to vent the vapour into the atmosphere. Even in a closed loop, I'd assume the evaporator fins/riffles/whatever get a mineral build-up that has to be properly maintained and probably isn't.
That station hardly ran at all during it's lifetime. HFO was (rightly) clamped down on even in the 80's as it is disgustingly dirty fuel. Ships get away with using it in international water because of crappy international regulation.
The Sunk cost fallacy meant it lived on for emergency use for far longer than it had any right to.
The French have worked with several of their nuclear power stations to develop aquaculture in the cooling water effluent downstream of the condensers, because the water is warmer than the ocean and thus ideal for growing fish for human consumption. Data centres could theoretically do this too, but given where they are (usually in built-up areas) it's not really an option.
A fair % of the water evaporates and is lost to the atmosphere and the rest picks up some dust and probably some bacteria and other iffy things from the air. And obviously the remaining water has picked up some heat so needs to be cooled itself or dumped.
As people have to work in this environment you have to be a little bit careful with the water you use. I know in the US after the legionella outbreaks companies would regularly dose their evap aircon with chlorine and it was like working near a swimming pool for a few days after.
Grey water supplies are quite common internationally. It is an obvious thing to do for some properties.
Getting building standards changed to accomodate is an issue : housebuilders can save 50p on some plastic tubing if they don't have to consider grey water supply.
Our local school collects and stores rainwater which is used to flush the bogs.
But the fire sprinkler system uses drinking water in storage tank, which is not kept eternally waiting for it's time to shine, but it replaced periodically with the old stuff going into the bog flushing reservoir. When the bog flushing reservoir is full the drinking water that tops up the sprinkler reservoir goes down the drain.
Oh, they'd love that, how to print a load more.
But if you are that way inclined, it's genuinely not that difficult to come up with a system to capture grey water. With a bit of thought you could rig something similar to the tank on a loo to fill the grey water tank from mains if not enough grey water is available.
Not a terrible idea to do if you are on a water meter and have the roof and loft space to work with.
No doubt some obscure building rules and safety considerations to work out but I don't see any reason why not.
"But if you are that way inclined, it's genuinely not that difficult to come up with a system to capture grey water."
It certainly isn't difficult, I do it in the summer to water the garden. But if you store any water for use domestically, you need to treat it. At a minimum you need to treat it to prevent legionnella growing, which can cause respiratory issues when aerosolised and breathed in. Even if only used for toilet flushing it can spread via droplets put into the air.
This is why rainwater capture systems, even if just for flushing turds down the drain need regular draining and flushing with clean mains water.
In some countries you can install a toilet with a small sink on top of the toilet cistern. You flush, and wash, and as you wash you refill the cistern. It's actually quite convenient for tiny houses and apartments where you want to put the toilet in it's own small room off of a hallway for whatever reason. It certainly would have been convenient in our small house, where you have to cross the hallway to the shower room to get to the sink.
But we couldn't have that, because in our suburb, the toilet is (must be) supplied from untreated runoff in a separate system.
Swings and round-abouts.
@AC
"using clean drinking water to cool and flush bogs: Stupidity."
Why would a water company provide anything but clean drinkable water. You seem to assume it's cheaper or easier to deliver both types of water.
I don't think it took anytime at all to accidentally mix that water.
But I could imagine there are countries where that could be true, but I don't think Britain is quite there yet, then again two taps instead of one is still so popular.
"all the roads in WC1 are closed for the next year while we dig up and replace all the Victorian era piping, "
That's not an excuse at all, that's literally what Helsinki is doing.
One or two main roads torn open for 3 to 5 years to "replace piping". And if you actually believe replacing piping takes 5 years, I've a bridge to sell to you.
Meanwhile, water companies in England have come under fire this year for allowing untreated sewage to discharge into rivers and onto the coastline, and failing to fix their ageing water supply infrastructure.
And here I was thinking that it is only South Africa that have the untreated sewage problem by municipalities discharging their Sauron-approved sewage into the Vaal and other rivers...
The London system is, I think, typical of the UK: It's a combined foul and surface water drainage system. There are sound reasons to do that (though we might not chose that option today if we were starting from scratch).
Since no one wants sewage backing up into their property, it was designed to overflow into the river if its capacity was exceeded (i.e. due to exceptionally heavy rain).
It's 160 years old. London has grown significantly in terms of population. Social and technological changes mean we all use lots more water (and thus put more into the sewer). More buildings means more water directed into the surface water drainage system rather than infiltrating into the soil. The system is having to cope with much larger flow volumes than when it was built. Add in all the modern wastes that get put down the drains (wet wipes, cooking fats, etc, especially), which can restrict flow or even block it entirely. Add in if you want climate change effects which may be leading to more intense rainfall events. Add in 160 year old infrastructure often at shallow depth under the road surface that wasn't designed to cope with today's traffic volumes/weights.
The system is taken over capacity more frequently than it used to, so sewage discharges occur more frequently. This hasn't happened suddenly, but has been a steady and entirely predictable process. It wasn't bad enough to worry about / spend money on, until it was. It's a failure to properly invest in the system for 100+ years while it was a municipal (i.e. 'state') controlled industry at least as much as it's a failure of the current private companies. Of course, pointing that out doesn't suit a lot of people's political prejudices. Also, pointing it out, doesn't actually solve the problem. However, understanding and admitting why the problem exists seems like a useful first step in working out a practical solution.
Don't think you will find anyone arguing with the need for the super sewer, apart from those living on the route while it's being built. I would argue we need considerably more of this nature round the whole UK.
What we don't need is Macquarie with it's hand in all of our pockets, that is entirely avoidable.
The idea of a combined sewer and rain water drainage is something we need to get away from. Overly developed towns and cities results in an ever higher % of the ground covered in buildings or non-permeable surfaces has resulted in a huge increase to the amount of water going down the drain.
I've looked into the water bill savings of diverting the rainwater from my house away from the sewer and it is tiny, so there is no incentive to find alternatives to putting it into the drain.
Some of these flood events we're now seeing are more caused by the lack of natural drainage. We've build up so much in the last 20 years that we cannot cope.
We are, to a degree.
This is a driver behind the principle of SUDS - Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems:
https://www.ciria.org/ItemDetail?iProductCode=C753F&Category=FREEPUBS
It's been a core consideration for UK construction for well over a decade. However, in practice it's more something applied to new-build (including demolish and rebuild), and not so easy to retrofit to existing structures.
Every new development gets a note from the water company saying "please don't discharge rainwater down the foul sewer, unless it would cost something to avoid this"
And whaddya know, all new developments just dump the rainwater down the foul sewer - and then the water company simply dumps raw sewage into the rivers and beaches for half the year, with no consequences.
It's a total failure of legislation. The water company should be held directly liable, at an existential risk level, and developments required to deal with their own rainwater. If that costs too much, then don't build there - it costs a lot because it's a bloody flood plain!
"The idea of a combined sewer and rain water drainage is something we need to get away from."
On the other hand, those heavy rains help flush all the crap through the sewers and give them a "spring clean" every now and then. Agreed though, capacity is the major problem. Maybe the run-off water needs a diverter at the entry to the sewage system so excess gets channelled elsewhere. Where that "elsewhere" is I leave as an exercise for the reader :-)
"The idea of a combined sewer and rain water drainage is something we need to get away from"
.... and here in North Helsinki district decided to go other direction and combined them to make more profit from "treating sewage", i.e. rain water. Which doesn't need treating at all.
Earlier rain water was pumped/flowed directly to the sea, the Right Way(TM). But there's no money in it.
Now, when it rains the sewers are flooding to the cellars and streets and untreated sewage is pumped to the sea because treatment plant can't handle the amount or *rain water*. Absolute greed.
Much of the 'clean' water piping is still positively Victorian. There are ways to line old pipes that will a) strengthen them (so less of the massive water mains bursts that flood countless homes) and b) reduce the leaks to almost nil. But that involves a material everyone likes to hate these days (plastic).
Black/grey water is as you described, and unfortunately, people's bad habits (like flushing wet wipes that are not to be flushed, or liquid fat that then congeals into 'fatbergs') ruin even Bazalgette's best intentions.
Much of the 'clean' water piping is still positively Victorian.
Some could be older than that. It's not that long ago that people were replacing water mains made from elm logs.
Hidden Hydrology: The Water in the Wood
which quotes this site:
My city, Southampton, has a mix of combined and separate wastewater systems. Everything built since the 60s has, by and large, been separated. The problem is when development occurs in an area that's using existing drains. That nicely separated stuff ends up combined at the main sewer... oops.
Our local 'surface water drains' drain directly to natural watercourses nearby. I think the road drains don't, due to potential pollution from oil spills etc
In Denmark the water providers af fined if the amount of water lost due to leakage excedes 10% This stated in the min 80,s Within a few years the average loss fell to 7.8% If The UK started doing the same thing then I suspect water shortages would almost disapear. as it would siuddenly make sense to invest in water infrastruktur as not doing so would reduce profits due to heavy fines.
https://eng.mst.dk/nature-water/water-at-home/water-loss/
Broadly, the UK does.
There is an official water regulator, Ofwat, that sets maximum permissible leakage rates and sewerage discharge volumes for the various water companies. Firms that exceed their permissible limits are subject to fines.
It's interesting that you note that within a few years, there was sharp drop - did water leakage rates then stabilise (not continue to improve) at that point?
In the UK, that appears to have been what happened following privatisation - there was an initial cut in water leakage (by about a third: claimed by the water companies and fact checked as true by the BBC), but no great improvement thereafter.
It might actually be interesting to compare how the supposedly dreadful UK water industry compares to other European water suppliers.
Ofwat, that sets maximum permissible leakage rates and sewerage discharge volumes for the various water companies
About that regulator, here he is defending the water companies:
Ofwat chief defends water companies over lack of new reservoirs
The head of the water regulator for England and Wales has defended water companies against criticism over not building new reservoirs despite high levels of executive bonuses and shareholder dividends.
David Black, the chief executive of Ofwat, also said old pipes were not to blame for leaks and that most companies were meeting their leakage targets.
Water companies are meeting their leakage targets, but...
Water regulator giving companies a ‘licence to leak’, say MPs and charities
Ofwat, the water regulator, is not using its full powers to clamp down on sewage pollution and leaks, ministers, MPs and charities have said.
The regulator has been criticised for giving water companies a “licence to leak” for years and not curbing massive bonuses for CEOs who preside over a system of pollution and chaos.
Hold onto your hats, but there appears to be a revolving door between Ofwat and the water industry:
Calls for inquiry into appointments of Ofwat chairs past and present
The appointments of the current and previous chairs of the water regulator Ofwat should be investigated, campaigners have said, as the Liberal Democrats called for the watchdog to be abolished.
Jonson Cox, a former chair of the regulator, had multimillion-pound links with the privatised water industry before taking up the role. The current chair, Iain Coucher, remains a senior adviser to a global private equity firm that has interests in the water industry in the US.
"It's interesting that you note that within a few years, there was sharp drop - did water leakage rates then stabilise (not continue to improve) at that point?"
Good question. It would make sense to set an achievable and properly enforced (with significant fines!) leakage targets and then adjust the targets downwards when everyone is meeting the original targets. It's a diminishing returns calculation, obviously, you can never reach zero leakage, but I'm sure there are experts who can reach a consensus on what is a reasonable end goal, eg 2% or 5% or whatever.
Reading these comments of water companies dumping shit in rivers and the sea to their owners delight makes me wonder if anybody is in charge.
One would think, and I am sure there are examples in many countries where the governments won't allow things like that at all.
And then one AC writes "be afraid", that is silly, rather do something about it, for a change.
From the 19th century right up to privatisation, it was routine for the municipal water companies for coastal areas in the UK to discharge raw (untreated but filtered for solids) sewage through short-outfall pipes. Those of us old enough should recall seeing the pipes at the beach - they were still there in the 1970's and 1980's.
It was only around the late 1980's (i.e. just before privatisation) that this seems to have changed...to long sea outfalls. My memory was that it was earlier in the 1980's, but from what I can find, it was a late '80's / early '90's thing:
http://www.fwr.org/wastedis/fr0031.htm
It was during the 1990's (i.e. post privatisation) that the water companies started putting in primary treatment works around the coast.
So the UK's approach to dealing with sewage has been rubbish, historically. It's not (just) because of greedy owners trying to maximise profits, it was even worse under the old 'state controlled' municipal companies. Effectively, the government wasn't just allowing it, but was responsible for actually doing it.
It's only since privatisation that there has been a (semi-)independent regulator that has the power to set limits to force better behaviour.
And with reference to your last comment, the UK is doing something about it (the Ofwat limits and fines for breaching them, Tideway, other ongoing sewage treatment works improvements all around the country that don't get headlines in anything other than the civil engineering press, because they are 'good-news' stories, not click-bait disaster stories).
We probably need to do more / do it quicker.
Partial reasons for these changes were the European regulations that required water companies to do this to clean up the environment (i.e. beaches that people would visit). Of course, rivers in the UK are not generally registered as 'bathing water' (right now there are two sites, one in Oxford, and one in Yorkshire, on rivers with that designated status). That's why there's a big stink (no pun intended) about TW pouring 'storm water outfall' into the Thames upstream of Oxford (because it threatens the Port Meadows with sewage pollution), and also into several chalk streams (which are a rarity in nature and several of which are being polluted by TW sewage).
Of course the biggest problem with recent years has been an increase in building housing, which in turn puts pressure on the sewage works to process more sewage, plus increased tarring/concreting over of land that would usually absorb water instead of run-off into storm drains (which then in turn mix with sewage to be funnelled through the sewage works). The water companies have not invested enough in appropriately adding capacity into their sewage works (some are constrained on site, so it's understandable that in those cases they can't do much). I've looked at planning applications and it doesn't look like Thames Water (or any other utility) is usually named as a respondent. It's usually Environment Agency, Highways England, the local authorities, local residents. Utilities seem to be assumed to be able to cope. Maybe they need to be listed now to say "sorry, but we can't have 8,000 more homes built without significant investment into/relocation of our sewage works, so we need to object to this planned development".
Of course, rivers in the UK are not generally registered as 'bathing water' (right now there are two sites, one in Oxford, and one in Yorkshire, on rivers with that designated status).
Wow! Does that mean that 'Parson's Pleasure' on the Cherwell doesn't have that status? I'm rather surprised. Then again, I had a colleague who rowed on the Tideway who ended up with a nasty case of necrotising fasciitis from Thames river water in the '90s, so perhaps I shouldn't be (he had to have a rather large chunk of one of his thighs removed). Apparently he was well aware of the risk of Weil's disease, but he was hit by something rather different.
Yeah, Parson's Pleasure is not listed as one. Wolvercote Mill Stream is, as is the Wharfe in Ilkley.
The water on the Tideway is absolutely disgusting. The rowing clubs on the Tideway monitor the outflows closely, and they get very vocal about the outflows when Thames Water doesn't notify river users of the outflows being used. Over the last year there've been several cases of rowers (both junior and adult) being very ill soon after being out on the river, and some clubs have posted pictures of the state of their boats after returning to their boat house showing sewage scum leaving a lovely brown line down the boat. That's what infuriates folks.
But hopefully around 2025 the 'native flowers' of the Tideway (i.e. the countless wet wipes that get caught in the undergrowth on the tidal stretch) will disappear as all the gunk ends in the tunnel instead.
Utilities seem to be assumed to be able to cope. Maybe they need to be listed now to say "sorry, but we can't have 8,000 more homes built without significant investment into/relocation of our sewage works, so we need to object to this planned development".
This does happen. Not that far from me (also in Oxford) Thames Water did object to planning permission as the local network was inadequate for what was being proposed. As such, the development had to include some investment for expansion (added to the sale price of course). All of which added about a year to the timetable causing development to happen in several phases.
But they cannot stop things - as both national and local governments have their "targets" to meet and can overrule anybody - assuming they're not already in cahoots with the development. Vale of White Horse District Council I'm looking at you ...
Yeah, the sory on not reaching national house building targets is currently in the news this week, but I didn't seen any mention of infrastructure to support all that development. I mean, we *STILL* have the situation of new builds only being provided BT ducting for phone/broadband, no one else seems to get the opportunity to provide fibre/cabling into a new build. There's probably old legislation still in place mandating "Post Office" telephone cabling but other providers have to pay, and so don't bother.
" but I didn't seen any mention of infrastructure to support all that development."
Of course you won't. Infra costs money to build with no or little profit, while houses are a source of pure profit, right now. A lot of it: Here in North about 60% of selling price is net income, after immediate expenses. Of course running a company in the long term costs money, but at least 50% pure profit. See: Hollywood accounting.
Also: Always follow the money.
"From the 19th century right up to privatisation, it was routine for the municipal water companies for coastal areas in the UK to discharge raw (untreated but filtered for solids) sewage through short-outfall pipes. Those of us old enough should recall seeing the pipes at the beach - they were still there in the 1970's and 1980's."
Oh yes, I also have clear memories of those too. Most noticeable when there was en especially low tide.
Expensive, but they're going to have to recirculate the water. (closed system with chiller, reservoir and microbial treatment like bromide pucks)
I used to set up and maintain injection molding machines. We didn't have metered water at the time, so we just ran town water through the cooling channels of molds. One time the town was tracking down the source of a leak and it turned out to be not a leak at all, but us lol
Maybe a year or so after that, the town switched to a metered billing system. Twas then that we built an apparatus with a huge plastic reservoir, with copper piping criss-crossing, with anti-freeze flowing through it. We got a huge industrial chiller second hand, that kept that antifreeze pretty cold, which removed the process heat from the water in the reservoir. It worked for us for cooling our molds and keeping the molded parts from expanding/distorting.
Note, however, that we were still paying bulk rates for electricity. We didn't care about that monstrous (old) chiller. We already had a whack of old 440V and 600V machinery (the plant also made brushes and big floor brooms and stuff) that weren't exactly the perfect models of physics.
That's just jerry rigged crap... a datacenter with money could do far better :-)
measures such as putting flow restrictors onto supply pipes and charging more for water during periods when demand is high.These steps are necessary to reduce pressure on the infrastructure during hot weather when demand for water surges,
Surely these steps are meant to INCREASE (water) pressure...
From the article:
Not all datacenters use water for cooling, but of those that do, a large facility might use anywhere between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day (between 3.78 million and 18.92 million liters), according to in the estimates.
That's a pretty reprehensible amount of water to use, if that's being drawn from the mains water supply, simply for "cooling". It seems bonkers to build such a facility in the southeast and take that much water, when you could build it elsewhere in the UK, have exactly the same network experience (BT's network is pretty good), have access to all sorts of other cooling options, and provide some jobs too....
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