Ban!!

[ACTIVE8]

If there was a better grey water system, that could be used for mains flushing. I believe the purging as described, is necessary because of deteriorated services (ie; inside of pipes less then optimum condition) and marginal capacity. Given the small grades on many large bore services (sewers/rainwater) if sediment or sludge buildup it can quickly gain on you.

Re the '76 drought - a lot of the "expert underpinners" seemed to come over here, once their shonky work was outed... And I have seen polyurethane injection used several times - it works, but by no means the magic bullet suggested by its exponents. Usually it will find a way into cracks and wedge parts of the footing wider open. Pus, the pricing is somewhere between extortion and highway robbery.

They "purged" the pipes to clear them out, and when customers report issues with their quality of supply they clear it out in this manner.

Although given that the water is not something that should not be wasted like this, then something should be done to recover it, and not waste it.

Once recovered from the system it can be used for certain uses, after it has been through a filtration process, which would be more environmentally friendly than just throwing away supply water down the drain.

[Xaccers]

"Clean" water from sewerage treatment plants, is it just dumped in a river to go to the sea or is it pumped to a water treatment plant to be turned back into mains water?

If it's the latter, then the water they used to flush the mains will end up back at the water so there will be little loss.

[DickieG]

"Clean" water from sewerage treatment plants, is it just dumped in a river to go to the sea or is it pumped to a water treatment plant to be turned back into mains water?

By the time water gets to people living at the east end of the Thames it has apparently been through households something like six times thankfully I'm towards the west end

[myglaren]

There was a proposal to run water from Kielder to the south and midlands some years ago (probably when the drought of 'around '85? was on). They were also going to run it to Teesside and put it in tankers to Saudi
There were lots of almost dry reservoirs around at that time, we used to pass the ones between Guisborough and Whitby each weekend and they were practically empty.
Our water (Washington) is drawn from the Wear, I believe, although there are loads of lakes and reservoirs around here and Kielder isn't far.

My son in law is a pilot on the Tees and did tell me a while back of how many milions of gallons of fresh water a day go over the Tees Barrier, that could be diverted for domestic and industrial use.

The problem is really the neglected infrastructure.