Water controversies in London
With a growing population, limited resources and ageing infrastructure, London, like many major cities, faces considerable challenges in achieving water sustainability. London receives an annual average rainfall of 640 mm. The current population of 8.9 million people is forecast to grow to 11 million by 2050 (Greater London Authority, 2017). Without the development of new water sources or significant reduction in per capita water use, demand is forecast to outstrip supply of water by 2020 (Thames Water, 2015). More than 20 per cent of the water supplied to London is lost through leakage in the distribution network, which includes pipes that are more than 150 years old in some areas (Carrington, 2017). London’s basic sewer system was also constructed in the nineteenth century, and sewer overflows into the River Thames are a major source of pollution.
London’s water infrastructure is owned by a private company, Thames Water, and is regulated by the Office for Water (Ofwat), the Environment Agency (EA) and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. The privatised water sector in the UK brings benefits and constraints in achieving sustainability. Privatised water companies are able to raise capital for investment in major new projects, including environmental improvements. However, investment must be shown to deliver value for money to water customers. Integration of the water infrastructure with wider goals for urban sustainability is more challenging than for cities where the water utility is municipally owned and operated (Dolowitz et al., 2018).
In recent years, two water infrastructure projects have generated controversy in London: the desalination plant at Beckton, which was opened in 2011, and the Tideway Tunnel, which at the time of writing is under construction as a solution to the problem of combined sewer overflows. Analysis of these projects using the five frameworks for urban water sustainability shows that debates about infrastructure reflect different values and conceptions of the nature of environmental problems and solutions.
Desalination
The Thames Gateway Water Treatment Works, also known as the Beckton desalination plant, was completed in 2011. With the exception of periods of operation for testing and maintenance, the plant has never supplied water to London. It was originally planned in response to low reservoir levels following dry winters in 2004–2006, but more recently has been justified as a ‘resilience measure’ to provide a backup water source in times of extreme drought (Loftus and March, 2016).
Controversy over the plant centred on the refusal of the Greater London Authority under Mayor Ken Livingstone in 2006 to grant planning permission for its construction. The permission was refused on environmental grounds, and a judgement that Thames Water had not adequately considered other options for preventing London’s future water shortages, including water recycling and leak reduction. When Boris Johnson was elected Mayor in 2008, one of his first actions was to approve the desalination plant, and construction began soon after.
Desalination is an energy-intensive and expensive source of clean water, with the potential to cause local environmental harm by entraining marine life in the intake and discharging highly saline water into receiving environments. The Beckton plant won a Sustainability Award from the Global Water Awards in 2009 for its environmental protection measures and use of renewable energy (Global Water Intel, 2009). The plant is located in the Thames Estuary, and is designed to treat brackish rather than saline water, which reduces the energy required for treatment compared to seawater desalination, which is more common in other parts of the world. The operating conditions set by the Environment Agency for the Beckton desalination plant require that a drought is declared and specific low-flow conditions are met in the River Thames (3,000 million litres per day (Ml/d) or less for 10 consecutive days at Teddington Weir; Thames Water, 2015). These conditions have not been met since the plant opened in 2011, and so the plant has yet to operate as designed.
Sustainability was a core concept in the controversy about the Beckton desalination plant. Mayor Ken Livingstone argued that the plant was unsustainable, particularly compared to less energy-intensive alternatives such as water reuse. The global water industry recognised the plant’s sustainability credentials with an award. This shows the contested nature of sustainability, and its discursive flexibility in debates about water technologies and infrastructures.
From the point of view of sustainable development, the cost, energy-intensity and local environmental impacts of the Beckton desalination plant must be considered in balancing the social need for a secure water supply. Assessment of the plant against these basic elements of sustainable development, particularly in comparison with alternative strategies for drought response and water resource management, shows it to be a costly and resource-intensive solution to the risk of future water scarcity. Concerns about the environmental and energy impacts of the plant can be seen in Mayor Livingstone’s objections, and in the operating conditions imposed by the Environmental Agency to ensure that it is only used as a source of water in times of extreme drought, not as an element of normal water supply to London.
Desalination is often presented as the ultimate technical solution to water scarcity, producing freshwater from the vast oceans, which account for 97 per cent of the water on Earth (Shiklomanov, 2000). The Ecomodernist Manifesto promotes desalination as one of a suite of technologies that will decouple human development from environmental impacts (Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015). Using renewable energy to power desalination, as is the case in the Beckton plant, is seen as further evidence of the capacity of technology to solve environmental problems and avert resource shortages (Ghaffour et al., 2015). Although more costly than conventional water resources, desalination follows the basic law of substitution for scarce resources, refining ever more contaminated reserves as higher-quality sources of the resource are exhausted. Desalination as a resilience measure aims to minimise the disruption of society caused by natural events. Social functions, including water consumption, are maintained as technology is utilised to solve the problem of environmental uncertainty and greater demand for water from growing populations.
The socio-technical systems concept of ‘lock-in’ refers to the stability of existing technologies, practices and institutions, creating conditions in which particular forms of innovation are favoured over those that require greater disruption. Anique Hommels uses the concept of the ‘obduracy’ of urban infrastructure and form to describe the endurance of dominant systems and approaches (Hommels, 2005). As a supply-side solution to water scarcity, owned and operated by the incumbent utility, the desalination plant represents a relatively minor change to London’s water infrastructure. It fits within existing economic and environmental regulatory processes for the water industry, and avoids the need for dramatic changes to water consumption or more socially challenging alternatives such as potable reuse or distributed supplies such as greywater recycling and rainwater harvesting. Although more energy-intensive and expensive than some alternatives, desalination is favoured because it is most compatible with the existing socio-technical form of water infrastructure in the city.
Alex Loftus and Hug March have analysed the Beckton desalination plant as an outcome of the financialisation of the water sector in the UK (Loftus and March, 2016). They show that the plant’s credentials as an ecological modernisation and industrial ecology solution to drought in London are only possible because of a vast network of international capital investment. The availability of investors as diverse as an Australian bank, a Canadian teachers’ pension fund and Chinese and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to provide capital for infrastructure projects provides important context for the decision making about water in London. The desalination plant is not merely a response to localised resource shortages, but a global investment opportunity and market for international engineering consultants and technology providers. The project was constructed by a consortium of the UK-based Interserve and Atkins Water, and the Spanish water company Acciona Agua, using membrane technologies from the Dutch firm Norit and the US-based Hydronautics. A political ecology analysis of the Beckton desalination plant highlights the role of international investors and firms, and the logic of capital growth through infrastructure expansion as key drivers for desalination as the preferred option for addressing the risk of water scarcity during drought.
The technical promise of desalination to provide a limitless source of water for human use runs counter to radical ecological goals of living within local ecological and hydrological systems. While radical ecologists promote alternative patterns of human settlement and society based on living in partnership with nature, desalination expands the boundaries of the control of nature using advanced technology. Through desalination, all water on Earth becomes a potential resource for human use, perpetuating a culture of exploitation that radical ecologists claim is the root cause of the environmental crisis. As a supply-side option it reduces incentives for citizens in London to adapt their lifestyles and live within local environmental variability and limits. While ecological modernisation measures such as the use of renewable energy and techniques to minimise the environmental impacts of the abstraction of the raw water and the discharge of the brine by-product, industrial-scale desalination is fundamentally incompatible with radical ecological approaches to sustainability.
The international recognition of the sustainability of the Beckton desalination plant reflects an ecological modernisation framework, which is consistent with engineering and industrialist culture and discourse. Criticisms of the desalination plant are also grounded in alternative framings of sustainability, pointing out the expense and energy intensity of the technology, the financial benefits to international investors and suppliers, and the distraction from a more fundamental reorganisation of London society and culture to change its water use to live within local hydrological limits.
Combined sewer overflows
Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are a significant environmental problem for a number of cities, particularly those with sewerage infrastructure built during the nineteenth century (Dolowitz et al., 2018). Combined sewers receive both waste water from buildings and surface water run-off from roofs, streets and hard surfaces. In order to prevent sewers flooding streets and buildings, these systems are designed to overflow into local rivers during heavy rainstorms. In London the sewers were originally designed by the Metropolitan Board of Works in the mid-nineteenth century to overflow into the Thames on average four times per year (Bazalgette, 1865). By the beginning of the twenty-first century overflows were occurring 50 times per year on average. The increased frequency of overflows is the result of the reduced permeability of urban surfaces, which is due to paving and building over open space, and the increased baseload flow of waste water from an increased population. In 2012 the European Court of Justice ruled that the UK was in breach of the European Union Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, with respect to combined sewer overflows in London.
In 2000 Thames Water commissioned the Thames Tideway Strategic Study to evaluate the options ‘to protect the Thames Tideway from the adverse effects of wastewater discharges’ (Thames Tideway Strategic Study, 2005: 5). The study was overseen by a steering committee chaired by independent engineer Chris Binnie and included members representing the EA, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Greater London Authority and Thames Water, with an observer from Ofwat. The committee reported in 2004, recommending the construction of a 35 km tunnel from Hammersmith in west London to the Crossness Sewerage Treatment Works in the east, and a separate tunnel to receive CSOs from the River Lee. The study investigated alternative options, including sustainable drainage systems (SuDS), which prevent inflow of surface water to the sewers by increasing infiltration and storage across the city. SuDS features include ponds, swales, rain gardens, green roofs and rainwater harvesting (Woods-Ballard et al., 2007). The report concluded that SuDS were not a suitable solution to CSOs in London because of the highly urbanised nature of the city, the impermeability of its clay soils, excessive costs and a lack of natural receiving waters for surface water run-off. The route originally recommended for the Tideway Tunnel was subsequently revised to include the Lee Tunnel, reduce the overall length of the Tideway Tunnel to 30 km, and discharge at Beckton, rather than Crossness treatment works.
The proposed Tideway Tunnel was the subject of considerable controversy, particularly during public consultation over the Development Consent Order for the project to be approved by a government minister as a nationally significant infrastructure project. In 2011 the Thames Tunnel Commission was formed by local authorities likely to be impacted by its construction (Thames Tunnel Commission, 2015). The commission investigated SuDS as an alternative to the interceptor tunnel, or as a complement to a smaller tunnel. They questioned the water quality standards set by the Thames Tideway Strategic Study as unnecessarily strict, thereby effectively ruling out SuDS as a potential solution, despite their wider environmental benefits. The commission also pointed out that SuDS were more difficult to implement than an interceptor tunnel in London, despite the environmental benefits, because planning and financing structures were more favourable to large infrastructure projects than to distributed interventions that controlled surface water at source. Other criticisms of the project included a report by Chris Binnie, the original chair of the Thames Tideway Strategic Study, questioning the increasing cost estimates for the tunnel, from £1.7 billion in the original study to £4.1 billion by 2014, and claiming that developments in SuDS techniques and upgrades to the sewer infrastructure since 2004, including the construction of the Lee Tunnel, meant that the tunnel was no longer required (Griffiths, 2014).
The Tideway Tunnel received its Development Consent Order in August 2014. In June 2015 a new company, Bazalgette Tunnel Ltd (operating as ‘Tideway’), was formed to construct, own and operate the tunnel. Major contracts for the construction were agreed in 2016. Construction is underway and is expected to be completed by 2023. SuDS are now promoted through local planning requirements and the Greater London Authority’s Sustainable Drainage Action Plan, primarily for the wider benefits associated with reducing run-off and increasing urban greening, rather than as the solution to CSOs in London (Greater London Authority, 2016).
The framing of different arguments in the debate about the Tideway Tunnel in London reflects wider debates about urban water sustainability. While stakeholder interests, such as profitable operation for the water company and avoiding the disruption caused by construction for riverside local governments, are important in determining particular positions within the argument, wider debates about the suitability of the tunnel or SuDS to solve the problem of CSOs in London demonstrate the intersection between technology and values in environmental decisions.
As an environmental protection measure to restore the health of the River Thames in the context of growing population and urbanisation in London, the tunnel is consistent with a sustainable development framing of urban water sustainability. The tunnel was largely supported by recreational river users, fishers and environmental organisations. It promises that London can continue to grow, without adversely impacting the local environment. The Thames Tideway Strategic Study addressed environmental, economic and social factors, including public health. The consultation and enquiries undertaken as part of the Development Consent Order process also addressed economic, social and environmental factors, albeit within a planning framework in the UK in which the principles of sustainable development are of less significance than maintaining economic growth.
Sustainable development principles were also invoked by opponents to the tunnel and proponents of SuDS (Thames Tunnel Commission, 2015). Local councils and residents argued that the tunnel would cause unfair disruption to local communities. It was argued that SuDS could deliver a wider range of environmental benefits and local employment opportunities than the tunnel, representing a more sustainable option.
The tunnel is a large technical solution to a persistent environmental problem, and is therefore consistent with ecological modernisation policies and theories. The idea of an interceptor tunnel itself is not innovative, but detailed modelling and design of the tunnel and associated surface facilities show the use of innovative, technical tools in demonstrating the sustainability of the project. The use of private finance and private ownership is also consistent with ecological modernisation, with the state acting as a regulator to ensure economic efficiency and environmental outcomes.
London’s sewerage system was designed and built as a series of interceptor sewers in the nineteenth century by Sir Joseph Bazalgette and colleagues at the Metropolitan Board of Works (Bazalgette, 1865; Halliday, 2001). The Tideway Tunnel is a continuation of the infrastructural logic laid down in the strategy for managing waste water and surface water in London more than 150 years ago. The tunnel can therefore be considered an outcome of infrastructural lock-in, with engineers, owners and regulators driven towards the solution that is least disruptive to existing arrangements within the city. With the creation of a new private company to construct and own the tunnel within the established regulatory frameworks of the water sector in England, it can be seen to be consistent with long-established processes of infrastructural provision in the city. By contrast, the legislative, planning and ownership structures for SuDS are less stable in England, requiring more complex arrangements and oversight. The socio-technical and institutional landscape of London is therefore more conducive to large centralised infrastructure solutions to water-management problems than decentralised systems such as SuDS.
The formation of Bazalgette Tunnel Ltd shows the value of the project to international investors and the capacity of the private sector to raise capital to deliver infrastructure projects. From a political ecology point of view this is an indication of the financialisation of the water sector (Loftus and March, 2016). Bazalgette Tunnel Ltd is owned by a consortium including German insurance company Allianz, the multinational Amber Infrastructure Group, UK-based fund manager Dalmore Capital, Dutch fund manager DIF, International Public Partnerships and Swiss Life Asset Managers. The £4.1 billion investment with guaranteed income provided by regulated water bills paid by London customers, and investment risks guaranteed by UK Treasury, provides a stable return to international capital fund managers. Water infrastructure is therefore as important as an investment vehicle as it is as a solution to an environmental problem, with significant financial benefits accrued to international investors.
A radical ecology approach to CSOs in London emphasises SuDS as the means to bring nature into the city, manage surface water locally and reduce impacts on the River Thames. From this perspective the tunnel is a continuation of nineteenth-century engineering models based on domination and control of water and nature for human benefit, while SuDS involves working within local hydrological systems to create wider benefits for environmental and human health and well-being. SuDS is part of a strategy of ‘making space for water’ in cities, while the interceptor sewer maintains separation of people from water, far below ground.