Sewage Spills in Special Areas of Conservation: A Growing Concern

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One thing that's great about Marine Protected Areas is that it protects the

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habitats that are in that area. So whether

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they be sponge reefs or coral reefs or maybe they're seagrass

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beds or mangrove areas or whatever they might be, the

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benefit of having these imaginary boundaries that are implemented is

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that they protect the areas from fishing damage from

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trawling or something like that, and it really helps. The

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problem with marine protected areas is that they are imaginary boundaries,

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right? They don't have physical boundaries. They're just boundaries

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that are put on a map, and they're enforced by, you know, the

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authorities, the people who manage them. They may be local authorities. They

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might be a coast guard. They might just be a local area, local

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village. But regardless, those boundaries do not stop

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bad water quality from getting in. So it could be like anything from

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nutrients to sewage to sediment

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can get into those marine protected areas. It's important that those are protected from

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land-based sources. But unfortunately, the article that

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we're going to cover today shows that there have been a ton of hours, like

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tens of thousands of hours, actually even hundreds of thousands of

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hours, where sewage was directly released into waterways

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in the UK. And we're going to talk about why that needs

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to stop and why that can't go into these area

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conservation zones for the UK. We're going to

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talk about that on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's

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start the show. Hey,

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everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. And this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with

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the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for

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a better ocean by taking action. Now, in today's episode, we're

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going to be talking about sewage. Yes, the poop water.

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The water that once you flush down the toilet, you're like, I don't even care what

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happens to it. I don't want to know about it. I can't believe that

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went down the toilet. Whatever you might think. That's

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what we're going to be talking about today. because it's news day today.

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It's finding out what's happening in the ocean and we're going to find out

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what's happening in the UK amidst of sewage that's

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going directly into waterways, which gets into these

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areas, these special areas of conservation, otherwise known

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as marine protected areas. Obviously not

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something that we wanted to talk about in terms of the degradation

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that could happen, but the amount of hours, we're looking at over 100,000 hours

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across the UK of sewage that was released into

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it. That's how many hours sewage was released directly into those areas. Not

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a good thing. But before we get into all of that, I

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want to talk to you a little bit about getting news to your

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inbox Mondays to Fridays from me to

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you as a gift for free. All you have to do is just put in your

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email at the link that I'm about to give you

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and then you get access to three news articles a day

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that you can easily look through. You get access to knowing what

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happens when we release an episode or what kind of episodes we're

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going to be releasing on the podcast. You also get access

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to all the other podcasts that are friends of mine, you know, a little bit

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of a network we have going on, Loose Network, but these are

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friends that are doing some great work in wildlife, in veterinary

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science, and conservation, and communications, and

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so forth. Really great episodes, so you can check

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that out just in the link

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in the show notes, or you can just go to speakupforblue.com forward

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slash newsletter. That's speakupforblue.com forward

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slash newsletter. All right, let's get back to the poop. That's right,

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the BS. So actually it's more of the HS, the human you

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know what. Sewers dumped for more than

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100,000 hours in England's protected marine areas. Now this is a

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company called iNews. So it's inews.co.uk. I'll

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put the link in the show notes for the actual article. It's really interesting because

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it looks like they did a bit of a study. or did a bit

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of an investigation. They said that there had been sewage discharges in

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marine special areas. And it looks like one, two, three,

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four, five areas. Humber Estuary up in

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the northeast of the UK, down in the south, Solent

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Maritime in the southern waters, Plymouth Sound and estuaries

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in southwest waters, Severn Estuary

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over in the west, and then Moore Canby Bay. in

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the East, and all of them are over 10,000 hours. Some of

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them are 15, some of them are 18. Solent Maritime in

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the South, 18,000 hours of sewage spill in

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that time. Now, I know for a fact that

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sewage spills every once in a while. We have in

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many different countries, including Canada, the US, and the UK that I

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know for sure. I'm sure Australia as well and other countries. We have these sewage treatment

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plants, and those treatment plants are there to capture all of our sewage and

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treat it before it goes back into our waterways, which is

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our rivers, our lakes, our streams, and eventually getting into

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the ocean. But we want them to be clean. And there are specific regulations in

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each of these countries where there are numbers at the end of

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the pipe, so where the discharge actually happens from the sewage treatment

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plants. not from your homes, not from the businesses, not from the restaurants.

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Those restaurants all go into one plant, or the crap

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from the restaurants, the sewage from the houses, the sewage from the

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businesses, all go to a plant, a specific plant that captures

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all of that. It gets treated, and then it goes back out into a

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stream or a river, usually a fairly large river that can

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handle this area. And based on the properties of that river, the

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flow, the height of the water, and so forth, and the water properties, it

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will have a number. The engineers will create a number, a wastewater number,

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to say, hey, your nitrates, your ammonia, your

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phosphates have to be a specific number in order to

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release this. If they're not, then you can be fine. The region, the county, the

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council, wherever you are and wherever area you live in

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and whoever's in charge of that from a political standpoint will be

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in charge of making sure that number is there. And if that

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number is not there, you're in deep poopy water, literally. And

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that's something nobody wants, right? We want clean waters. We

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want to make sure our sewage works well. Now, there are different

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levels of sewage. The secondary sewage is what we

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have normally have, which takes care of a lot of the major

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sewage. I know the tertiary sewage takes care of nutrients

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like nitrates and phosphates better. But

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these are point sources. So these are sources where the sewage gets treated,

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it goes out into a discharge into a pipe, and that pipe

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goes out either into a river or stream or a lake. Like for

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instance, I live in Burlington. Burlington has a

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sewage treatment plant near the beach, which is kind of gross because when you're on the beach,

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all you're doing is smelling that sewage treatment plant. But

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we know the pipe goes out two kilometers out underneath the

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water, two kilometers out, and it gets discharged out there as

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treated water. Unfortunately, sometimes, not

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just that plant, but other plants, when it gets rainy and

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it rains too much and it overflows, then they have

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to release the sewage into the water. It's not supposed to happen a lot of times, but it

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does happen, and as there are more More

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catastrophic events, like rain events where flooding would happen, more

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of that's going to happen. That's a climate change thing and a weather thing.

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That's not something that's going to be good in the future and has to be accounted

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for in the future. And that's a lot of design, a lot of wastewater

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engineering design and so forth to be able to ensure that we

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properly treat those. Now, I've went on a little bit of a tangent,

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but I want to give you the basics of what's happening here.

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When we are seeing that nearly 18,000 hours

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of sewage is dumped in the Solent Maritime Special

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Area of Concern on the southern coast of England, which includes

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a major estuary that's home to the rare sponges and reefs, that

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obviously is not a good thing. That's something that there

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needs to be better management of that area. Now,

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the southern area, the southern water, which was responsible for wastewater services

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in the region. So the company said that it will be investing more than 3 billion

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pounds between 2020 and 2025 to

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improve its network and reduce storm overflows. Now, this

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is something that happens all the time. We see companies that

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are managing these wastewater areas if

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they're privatized. Most places that I

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know are usually government regulated, but it depends on the government. But

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because they could privatize it, they're regulated. So there has to be

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investment. So either it's public money or it's private money that has to be invested. But

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if it's private, it should be held to even more account to

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be like, hey, you know what? We can't do this anymore.

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You know, like we can't handle people putting

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this together where it's like we're overflowing this. But there

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has to be investment. There has to be money investment to constantly update, continually update

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this area. Because if we don't, then boom. It's

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going to get flooded with nastiness. Literally, nastiness. And

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so like the company also plans

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to invest another 7.8 billion between 2025 and

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2030 to upgrade its wastewater treatment works and reduce environmental damage.

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That's always nice, but that's a lot. It takes a long time. Why is

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it taking so long? The Plymouth Sound and estuaries as

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a special area of concern located in the south coast of England, west of

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the Solent Maritime Southern area of Sac. Southern, ah. special

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area of conservation, had sewage dumped into it

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for over 15,400 hours last year.

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And there's more and more and more, and I'll link to the

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article so that you can see. And so this

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iNewsplace developed a manifesto of just being like, hey, you

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know what? We need to fix these things. And

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obviously, this is a growing problem. Sewage

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should not happen in a country like the UK. or countries

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like the UK, and this has

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to be solved and needs to get buy-in from the

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government. And obviously the UK just went through a major

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election where there was a huge overturning of the government, not

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overturning in terms of a coup, but an overturn in terms of it's

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a new government. It's not the Conservative Party anymore. The

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Labour won over the Conservatives. Unfortunately, the Labour hasn't really

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backed it in full. So, the Liberal Democrats

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and the Green Party have signed up to the manifesto, but

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the Labour and the Conservatives are yet to back it in full. So, they probably back certain

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parts, but not full. So, there

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are certain people who have been stepping out. I don't know the people, Sir Kair

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Starmer, who I believe is actually, might be

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the Prime Minister now. I think if I

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recognize the, maybe not, I don't know. I'll have to look that up, sorry.

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Don't believe me on that. But he basically stops short of

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fully committing to its five pledges, although he prays

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the manifesto. And there's a link to this manifesto in

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the article, which I'll link to. More than 20 environmental

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organizations have endorsed the manifesto, including the National Trust,

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Britain's biggest conservation charity. So that's a

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plus. And it says that the National Trust spokesman

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said, It is appalling, our spokesperson said, it is

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appalling to hear about the number of sewage spills that were made

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into or along the borders of special areas of conservation.

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Just 14% of English rivers are in good ecological health and

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1 in 10 freshwater and wetland species in

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the UK are threatened with extinction. That's not a good

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record to have. That is not a good record to

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have. And here's the problem when you have special area of concerns or

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you have a marine protected area, you have some kind of protected area that doesn't have physical boundaries,

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is that the water can seep in and get in. So if it's bad

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water quality, the protection is not really great. It might be protected

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from extractive processes like fishing, mining,

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or habitat destruction like coastal

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development, but it doesn't necessarily stop any bad water

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quality from coming in. That

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has to be managed from land. That has to be

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managed from people. And if you have the treatment facilities, upgrade

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them. Now, I know Canada and Ontario, especially because I live in Ontario, went

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through something like this over the last two decades, where

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they realized that the populations in certain areas were increasing dramatically. And

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they need, especially in Southern Ontario, they needed to upgrade their

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facilities to accommodate those future concerns. So

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looking at population modeling for people, looking at

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how people will be using the area, that's going

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to change over time as there are more and more people on this planet.

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We have to house more and more people. There have to be the proper sewage

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treatment plants, facilities, upgrades and designs

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that need to go into place, especially if there's an area that's booming or there's an

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area that just needs updating. It's old and it needs updating. That should be

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happening on an annual basis. These risk assessments, these

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evaluations have to go into play. If they don't,

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We get problems like smelly problems and sewage problems.

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It's not nice. It is not nice at all. And trust

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me, from a person who worked as one of his first jobs as

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a wetland technician in the Toronto region, you

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know, the Toronto has some very interesting things

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that go into their rivers and stuff and the Don River. which

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can be a beautiful river at times. There are some shady parts

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that I didn't even want to walk into when I was working there because it

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looked really nasty and it was heavily polluted and

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needs to change. You just never

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know what you're going to get into. We

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know the problem, we know what's needed to fix it, more investment, more

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political buy-in. It'll be really interesting to see now that the

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Labour Party is in power at a majority, from

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what I hear, and I don't know that political system very well. It's very similar

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to Canada's, but I don't know the full. It's got a lot of seats compared to

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Canada. So it'll be very interesting to see how that's done, regardless

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of the fact that the Labour Party should be

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more environmentally aware. hopefully will be. My understanding is they're a

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little bit more left-leaning, a lot more left-leaning than the conservatives. So

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it'll be interesting to see where this goes and how the environment is

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treated in the future. We are at a crucial point

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in human history where governments need to focus

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on the environment. Governments need to be aware that

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the economy and the environment are tied together at this

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point. Whether we thought about it before or not, it doesn't matter. At

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this point now, If we have a bad environment, we are going to be spending more

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money. It's going to be taking away money from the economy. It's going to be costing us

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more. Whether it's a carbon tax or some other type of

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tax, we're going to have to start paying for a lot of these natural disasters that

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are happening. And if we can't control things like sewage

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treatment plants ahead of time and be proactive

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instead of reactive, we're going to be in trouble. So

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this is a heads up to all those my listeners in the UK. Make

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sure now the Labour Party is in power that you are putting their

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their feet to the fire on saying, hey, you know what? Like we

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need to make sure that these rivers are treated fairly. This

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is our lifeblood. This is our water. This is what

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we need to survive. We are an island. We need to make sure

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that our freshwater is in good condition, not only for the environment and

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for the animals that are around, but also for human health. We need

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this to make sure that this goes well. And so investment's going to have

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to be made, spending's going to have to be made, and that's going to have to be foresight

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on the government. And so it's up to you as citizens to

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make sure the government is looking forward. So my listeners here who are from

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the UK who are very environmentally focused, because you're listening to

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this podcast, so you want to learn about the environment, it is time to

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put this government to the test and say, hey, let's

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make sure our sewage doesn't go directly into our

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waterways anymore. Can we do that? That'd be great. All

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right, that's it for today's episode. If you have a question or comment, or you're from

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the UK and you want to comment and you have more information on this, I would love

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to hear it. You can hit me up on Instagram,

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at howtoprotecttheocean. Just DM me, at howtoprotecttheocean. Other

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than that, and if you want to sign up for the newsletter, speakupforblue.com forward

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slash newsletter. That's speakupforblue.com forward slash

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newsletter. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love for you to sign up to

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the newsletter. And I want to thank you so much for sharing this episode for

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the people that you know will really enjoy it and listening. It is

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so, so nice to have an audience that listens and

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engages with me. I really, really love it. So thank you so much

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for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew