04/09/2026
Anyone working in the built environment has looked at drainage plans. In most places, all sewage and rainwater primarily from roofs, drives and to a lesser extent, roads goes into huge Victorian tunnels and travels by gravity downhill to a small tank where it’s pumped out at high pressure through a small pipe up to either the next nearest tank or treatment works. The pumps can’t possibly pump rainwater out at the rate it comes in, so the tanks quickly fill and overflow a mixture of sewage and rain into the sea or nearest river. Nice. In Penarth, it’s not possible to dig up the promenade to build a huge tank, or lay miles of pipes up to the treatment works to pump out water quicker, and if they did, that would overflow aswell. There is no viable solution short of digging up the entire country. Apply this to every town and city nationwide and the scale of the problem confounds. The only conceivable fix is to stop or slow down rainwater getting into sewers in the first place. The biggest number 1 fix would be for water companies to help all households with the relatively low cost of fitting water butts, soakaways, rain gardens and green roofs to drastically slow down rainwater entering sewers. I would like to see this happen.
