London's Great Stink
historic-uk.com
historic-uk.com
Or just 4 if they happen to be Morello cherries.
https://rickdunhamblog.com/2014/04/02/toxic-white-house-wate...
Still continues to this day.
> "Thames Water has pumped at least 72bn litres of sewage into the River Thames since 2020..."
> "In most areas there are not volume measuring devices, but Thames Water use sewage monitors to measure volume in some locations. The water company used them while making the Thames Tideway, and they are the only known monitors of the kind fitted in the country. Because they do not cover the entire network, it is likely far more sewage was released than that measured."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/10/thames-w...
They are currently spending 4.3B pounds to fix it with basically a giant holding tunnel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Tideway_Tunnel
In Oxford, I have noticed raw sewage floating in the river several times. Things were pretty bad and authorities have sometimes issued a warning to potential swimmers.
In the market town Thame, next to the eponymous river Thames, there were frequent leaks to the main street pavement. Really disgusting and sad as it is otherwise a very cool area.
In New Zealand where I am, rivers are frequently closed for swimming after very heavy rain. We have separated sewage and storm water but in heavy rain, storm water ends up getting into the sewage system which can overflow. Short of making a sewage system capable of handling the maximum flow (very expensive and not possible for an established city), or preventing any water getting into sewage (tricky to do this in a foolproof manner, as sewage needs to be vented otherwise gases build up and needs to be accessible) not much can be done about it beyond ensuring the sewage system is not overflowing for other reasons such as blockages.
For instance, Madrid has built a massive 400,000 m3 tank and the problem is now solved. Lots of other main cities are doing / have done the same.
Without those, in the event of heavy rain, there is not only raw sewage but also lots of contaminants from e.g. traffic that leak into rivers and kill everything there periodically.
I guess its a question of scale, I was referring to small rivers that meander through city suburbs and are part of the stormwater network and may have a few overflows on occasion, rather than a city of Madrid which has a population about 60% of my entire country.
In New Zealand stormwater to my knowledge is not treated.
If anyone else is interested: https://www.canaldeisabelsegunda.es/en/-/tanques-de-tormenta...
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/03/g-cans-tokyos-massive-...
I think sewage is already pretty insulated to not contaminate groundwater, is it not?
Now the UK still has to deal with smog. Cars might be all electric in my lifetime, but smog is still a persistent problem and causes respiratory problems.
Plastics, PFAS. Carbon ...
Until it's staring us right in the face, we just keep piling on. Our new problems aren't so easily remedied.
It's hard to draw the line on exactly how much evidence is needed before governments should outlaw something...
Whatever the amount of evidence is that is appropriate to build regulations on, it's certainly far, far above that.
Anyway, the kicker is that we're doing something similar today! Climate change aside, we spew tons of noxious gasses and particulate from diesel/gas/ships right into the air we breathe in.
But when I learned about it, I believe part of the issue was that the speed at which industrialization happened overshot the ability of the infrastructure to keep up, also the increase in population, decrease in living conditions in london, made those kind of concerns secondary to things like food