Sewage follow up

Time for a follow up on my earlier blogs about the problem of smells from the Berrylands Water Treatment Works (sewage to you and me).

I was sent some interesting news from a reader of the blog who pointed me in the direction of a recent case concerning Mogden Works in Hounslow, also Thames Water.

On 19 July 2001 the London Borough of Hounslow served abatement notices on Thames Water under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 for causing odour and mosquito nuisance.

On 8 June 2005, after four years of legal wrangling, Thames Water finally accepted a legally binding schedule to comply with the July 2001 odour abatement notice. It includes operational changes that need to be implemented within 7 days and 30 days and sets a 42 month timetable for fitting covers to the storm tanks, east and west inlet works and the east side second stage primary settlement tanks.

The Mogden residents fighting this have a campaign website all about the problem and their actions. Admittedly this is a bigger works but then it is not the size but the smell that is at issue.

I have now met with the Borough’s environmental health officer and he is considering whether there might be grounds to consider some form of action against Thames Water. The legal technicalities of this are that we need to set up some form of monitoring if we are to ever form against that would hold up scrutiny.

We clearly need to monitor the situation and see what develops. I will pursue the other avenues and see what happens.