Thames Water | >Re-PHOTO

March for Clean Water: On Sunday 3rd November 2024 I joined thousands of marchers gathering at Vauxhall overlooking the River Thames for a march demanding urgent action to end the pollution of our rivers and sea.

Much of this pollution is by illegal discharges of sewage by the privatised water companies who have failed to make the investments needed since the regional water authories were sold off to private companies in 1989.

Opinion polls then showed that just under 80% of the UK population were against water privatisation back then, and now over 80% are in favour of bringing them back into public ownership.

Back in 1884, Joseph Chamberlain got it right when he argued “It is difficult, if not impossible to combine the citizens’ rights and interests and the private enterprise’s interests, because the private enterprise aims at its natural and justified objective, the biggest possible profit.”

Private water companies were largely taken over by local authorities by the start of the 20th century and under the 1973 Water Act passed by a Tory government under Edward Heath these were amalgamated into the 10 Water Boards each based on the basin of one of our major rivers, “responsible for water extraction, water supply, sewage treatment and environmental pollution prevention,“

Unfortunately government failed to provide them with the money to properly carry out their functions, and the situation was made much worse after Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 when she made it very much harder for the water boards to borrow money for capital projects.

This left the water authorites unable to meet the new EU standards for “river, bathing, coastal, and drinking water quality” which would have required according to Wikipedia “from £24 to £30 billion.”

In light of this, the Conservatives went ahead with privatisation despite the huge public opinion against it. It was hardly a sale, more a getting rid of their liabilities at a token price of £7.6 billion, at the same time taking over the existing debts of £5 billion and gifting the companies a present of £1.5 billion. So the sale only raised £1.1 billion.

Privatisation made England & Wales the only countries in the world to have “a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system.” Something we have been both paying for and suffering from, SInce privatisation water prices have risen by 40% above inflation and in 2017 “research by the University of Greenwich suggested that consumers in England were paying £2.3 billion more every year for their water and sewerage bills than they would if the water companies had remained under state ownership.”

And while we have paid more, the shareholders of at least some of those water companies have done very well out of it – as have many of the top managers who have got huge bonuses despite the many failings of the companies they have run.

Since privatisation investment in the water industry has decreased by around 15% and the companies have built up debts of over £60 billion – rather less than their payouts to shareholders of £78 billion. Huge amounts of treated water is now lost through leaks as our water systems have not been properly maintained and expanded to meet new demand.

And sewage. More and more untreated raw sewage has been dumped in our rivers. What was supposed only to happen when unusual rainfall overwhelmed the sewers now appears to have become a normal occurence in some areas. We should have been investing in increasing separation between drainage and sewage, particularly in new developments but nothing has been done.

We are still largely working with a Victorian system of drainage with a hugely increased population, installed when few homes had baths, washing machines and showers were unheard of and far fewer homes had even one flushing toilet. Demand for water has increased greatly per person.

The march in London on 3rd November was organised by River Action, “an environmental charity on a mission to rescue Britain’s rivers from the deluge of pollution that has left the majority of our waterways in a severely degraded ecological condition” and it reflected this, backed by a long list of other organisations.

Although sewage outflows are the major source of this, agricultural wastes particularly from intensive animal farming are a huge source of pollution in our rural areas and there are still some other industries which pollute our rivers.

We need to bring the water companies under public control and also reform or replace Ofwat and the Environment Agency which have clearly failed in their roles.

You can see more pictures from the march in my album March for Clean Water.

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Camera Place, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-64-positive_2400 — *Camera Place, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-64*

Having found there was a street in Chelsea named Camera Place I had to photograph it. It’s a short street and my picture shows around half of it, looking roughly west towards Limerston St. Chelsea used to have a Camera Square, Camera Street and Little Camera Street which have since disappeared, but as they were built in the 1820s they almost certainly have little to do with photography. By 1918 Camera Square had become something of a slum and the area was demolished, rebuilt as Chelsea Park Gardens with up-market housing in suburban garden village fashion, though retaining a rigidly square layout without the typical sinously curving streets.

The view in Camera Place has changed little; some new railings and the small tree is now rather large.

Elm Park Mansions, Park Walk, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-62-positive_2400 — *Elm Park Mansions, Park Walk, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5c-62*

Elm Park Mansions has five large blocks around a courtyard, with one of the blocks (flats 25-54) occuping half the length of the north side of Camera Place, behind and to my right as I took the previous picture. The mansions with 189 mostly one and two bedroom flats were built by the Metropolitan Industrial Dwellings Company on land leased to them by Major Sloane Stanley in 1900. The Freehold for the property was taken over by the leaseholders in 1986 and since then the state of the properties has been improved. Two bed flats have sold in recent years for around £800,000.

Elm Park Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-15-positive_2400 — *Elm Park Rd, Chelsea, Kensington and Chelsea, 1988 88-5b-15*

Elm Park Road dates from 1875 when Chelsea Park House was demolished and the houses, many designed by George Godwin, were built between then and 1882. The central house in this picture, at 76 Elm Park Road for built for Paul Naftel, (1817-91) a Guernsey born watercolour painter and his wife and family who came to London in 1870. He moved here in around 1884 and the adjoining houses were also homes to landscape artists. Naftel later moved out to Strawberry Hill, Twickenham where he died.

Grosvenor Canal, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-12-positive_2400 — *Grosvenor Canal, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-12*

The Grosvenor Canal was began by the Chelsea Waterworks Company who had leased the land from Sir Richard Grosvenor in 1722, and enlarged a creek there to supply drinking water and also to create a tide mill used to pump the water. When their lease expired in 1823, the then Earl of Grosvenor decide to put in a lock and turn the creek into a canal, extending it to a basin where Victoria Station now stands, around half a mile from the Thames. It opened in 1824 carrying coal, wood and stone into the centre of a rapidly growing area of London.

Grosvenor Canal, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-13-positive_2400 — *Grosvenor Canal, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-14*

Victoria Station was built over the canal basin, and more of the canal closed in 1899 for a station extension. Westminster City Council bought what was left of it in 1905, then filled in more of it in 1927 for the Ebury Bridge estate.

Grosvenor Canal, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-14-positive_2400 — *Grosvenor Canal, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-14*

The canal continued in use by the council taking refuse in barges from Westminster and other local authorities downriver to be dumped until 1995, making this vestigial canal the last in London in commercial use. In 2000 it began to be developed as an expensive waterside development, with the lock being retained but a boom across the entrance from the Thames prevents access for boats despite mooring pontoons inside the development.

Western Pumping Station, Bazalgette, Thames Water, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 198888-5e-15-positive_2400 — Western Pumping Station, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-15

The Chelsea Water Works continued to extract water from the Grosvenor Canal until an Act of Parliament prevented extraction of water from the Thames in London in 1852 and they moved up-river to Surbiton. Sewage was increasingly becoming a problem as London grew and the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858 prompted Parliament into action, passing a bill in 18 days to construct a new sewerage system for London.

The solution by Joseph William Bazalgette was a system of sewers that delivered the sewage around 8 miles downriver to Beckton on the north bank and Crossness on the south, through main high level middle and low level sewers through North London and main and high level sewers in South London. The plans included stone embankments beside the river – the Victoria, Chelsea and Albert embankments which he designed.

Lamp post, Western Pumping Station, Thames Water, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-16-positive_2400 — *Lamp post, Western Pumping Station, Thames Water, Grosvenor Rd, Pimlico, Westminster, 1988 88-5e-16*

Bazalgette didn’t do everything himself, but he kept a very close eye on every aspect of his great project, and some of the specifications he laid down – such as the use of Portland Cement – have kept the system running despite increasing demands since it was completed in 1875. Now it is being augmented by the new ‘Super Sewer’ running underneath the river, the Thames Tideway.

As well as engineering considerations, Bazalgette was also a stickler for the aesthetics and there are some fine examples of Victorian design in his works. The Pumping Station which housed the powerful steam engines needed to send the sewage on its way, as well as its chimney (in a picture above) and the Superintendents House here are all Grade II listed.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Tag: Thames Water

March for Clean Water, London, 3 Nov 2024

Camera Place and the Grosvenor Canal 1988