London’s Super Sewer

Many people say that Londoners are full of it.  This may or may not be true but there is one certainty – when they let it go (as it were) it has to go somewhere.  In Victorian days the smell from the river became so pungent that our Members of Parliament couldn’t stand the stench (one might, perhaps, argue there was a little yin-yang going on there).

It was time for change then and it's time for change now. The folks at Thames Tideway have just released the video above.  In it, real Londoners talk about the new ‘super sewer’ that is being built below the streets of England’s capital city.  It is costing a huge £4.2 billion from the start of the project in 2014 to its end in 2023. That's quite a while.  Yet Rome was not built in a day, as they say, and – for sure – a city the size of London needs serious stuff going on underneath in order for day to day life to carry on pong-free up top.

This is, then, a huge feat of engineering which is needed because although the Victorians solved the problem back in the 1850s, times and populations change.  Where we think they may have solved the problem permanently, there are still huge issues. Even now, the Thames still needs clearing up and raw sewage is going in to river at (what you might think is) an alarming rate (and you would be right).  Each year 8 billion toilet flushes go straight in to the Thames.

Big issues lead to big solutions. The project is vast – anything that takes almost a decade will be by sheer definition.  Yet we can all get our heads around the whole thing with some interesting visuals and a narration to accompany them by contemporary denizens of Hackney, Southwark and the Southbank.

So if you live in London and have noticed building sites pooping, sorry, popping up along the river without any tall buildings to accompany them, then you can probably assume that the real work is going on underground.  Thames Tideway (perhaps should be Tide-away) are going to make sure, with this massive investment, that The Great Stink of 1858 does not get a sequel in the twenty first century.  Sequels are never as good as the original, anyway, but in this case it’s one we really don’t want at any cost...

Take a look at the video above.  The scale is epic but it reflects a vision for a city which will be with us in five years.