Ben Morris removing wet wipes flushed into the River Brent from a misconnected block of flats in west London (Picture: w8media)
Hundreds of homes in London are flushing their toilets directly into rivers, and in some cases have been doing so for years.
The problem is well known by councils and Thames Water, and has been described as ‘a catastrophic failure of regulation’.
An Environmental Information Request specified at least 84 homes in west London alone which are wrongly plumbed,but the problem is thought to be much wider, potentially reaching even 1% or more of London’s housing stock which would be tens of thousands of residences.
One apartment block of 14 flats was identified as having a ‘misconnection’ in its plumbing over six years ago in April 2018, while the freeholder of another building was notified in 2021.
But with the properties still not replumbed, poo and wee continue to flush into the River Brent and River Crane, tributaries of the Thames.
On a visit to the Brent River Park last week, Metro saw two sections of the River Brent where sewage was pouring into the water.
The smell itself made the problem clear, but we also witnessed sanitary towels and wet wipes stuck at the entrance to what was supposed to be a surface water drain.
This issue is separate to sewage discharging into rivers through storm overflows, which is controversial but permitted when heavy rain could otherwise overwhelm the sewage system.
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Quizzing mayor Sadiq Khan in May, Hina Bokhari AM stated there were ‘currently 943 identified misconnections in London’, saying he would have his work cut out to make the capital’s rivers swimmable within ten years.
Misconnections can range from a single dishwasher to an entire newbuild block of flats connected wrongly.
On the day we visited the Brent, water was freely flowing from a surface water outflow although it had not rained recently, and murky ‘sewage fungus’ was growing.
Ben Morris, founder of the Clean Up the River Brent campaign and a Brent River Park charity trustee, took measurements of both ammonia and phosphate levels from water pouring into the river.
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A sanitary towel fished out from the drain as it entered the river (Picture: w8media)
The blocks misconnected in west London
Thames Water specified seven current misconnections to the River Brent and River Crane, and when they were first identified:
April 2018: Block of 14, discharging into the River Brent in Ealing
November 2021: Unknown number of homes, discharging into Dollis Brook on the River Brent in Barnet
February 2023: Block of 30, discharging into Yeading Brook on the River Crane …read more
Source:: Metro