Jessica Townsend FRSA

The sewage crisis laid bare As we’ve been having a wet winter, sewage has been cascading into the River Roding from outfalls everywhere. But one has been discharging for so long (550 hours, or over three weeks) that I thought it was an error with the sensor. I decided to spend my free time on a Saturday night checking it out. It was not hard to find, as the loud noise of rushing water instantly drew me towards the right part of the site. Climbing a fence, I found that the outfall was covered in brambles & fallen trees and hadn’t been inspected in years. There was clearly a fault in the storm tanks which was causing them to spill huge amounts of sewage, even when it wasn’t raining. Even worse, the outfall itself had become clogged with years of debris, so the whole site had been flooded & become a lake of sewage, literally acres in extent. The flow was so intense that it was not possible to fully measure it, but I would estimate it was at least 100 litres a second, likely more. I checked the ammonia levels & it maxed out my checker, so I used a higher range checker which gave an ammonia reading of 27ppm: ie very concentrated sewage. Doing some quick calculations, I discovered that this one spill had poured at least 180,000,000 million litres of concentrated raw sewage straight into the River Roding, putting the health of local people at risk and causing huge ecological damage to the river. It frankly beggars belief that I, as a volunteer in my spare time, was able to discover this serious illegal sewage spill, but at no point has anyone from either Thames Water or the Environment Agency thought to go and investigate the outfall that has apparently been flowing for weeks. The time for talking has ended: we now need change and real action.

Timelapse of the lunar eclipse September 7, 2025