Thames Water Apologizes After Leaving 200 Tank Trucks Of Raw Sewage In Surrey Town For 6 Months

More than 200 tankers of raw sewage were driven to a Surrey town and left there for six months, causing a “nightmare” for residents after all of Thames Water’s 360 treatment plants reached critical capacity. Thames Water has apologised but is refusing a request from Surrey councillors to make a financial acknowledgement to the community by reducing bills for 11,000 people.

The crisis in treatment capacity began last February when Hogsmill, one of the main Thames Water treatment works, broke down, forcing staff to move thousands of cubic metres of raw sewage at speed and deposit the contents into tanks in Camberley because there was no other storage capacity across its whole estate. Storage tanks at Woking were already full from a previous crisis.

Thames Water has told councillors in Surrey it had had no choice. Either they moved the sewage to storage tanks in Camberley, emptied it into rivers causing massive pollution, or left it in tankers on the roadside which could have exploded, causing a major national incident. Evidence of the crisis across Thames Water’s whole region comes as MPs have recalled the chief executive officer to answer questions on Tuesday on the company’s financial situation. Auditors have warned the parent company of Thames Water it could run out of money by April if shareholders do not inject more cash.

In the incident, which took place over the summer, 6,000 cubic metres of raw sewage sludge were left in an open tank for six months without being treated. About 11,000 residents suffered the impacts of raw sewage being stored during the hottest summer on record. Odour suppression was put in place but only during the day and it did not cover the entire tank. Thames Water was called to explain why it had decided to move so much sewage to the town. In evidence, a manager said they had no choice. “The risk that we had if we didn’t move that sludge was pollution of the waterways and potentially 30-40 trucks parked on the motorway in the middle of summer which could have exploded,” he told the external partnerships committee of Surrey Heath borough council.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/12/thames-water-apologises-after-200-tankers-of-raw-sewage-left-in-surrey-town