Posted on Mon, 07/12/2009 - 19:10 by Katee

I went to university in a small Canadian city called Kingston. Kingston is famous for: once being the capital of Canada, housing the highest concentrations of prisons in Canada, and for having a very large student population. In my faculty at university, Kingston was famous for something else: its archaic water treatment plant. There was an urban legend within the Geography Department that one should not drink tap water if it has rained for more than 10 hours straight, as you would consume raw sewage. This was because of a system failure at the water treatment facility that caused raw sewage to be released once the sewage system reached it capacity, so roughly after 10 consecutive hours of rain. After several heated debates, 2 trips to the water treatment plant and a 4 year degree, I have discovered that the urban legend, is not a legend! After heavy rainfall, Kingston residents are faced with a decline in drinking water quality due to a system overload.

Fast forward 3 years later, I now live in the UK. It has been raining what feels like non-stop for weeks! So, I started thinking about London’s sewage systems and all of this rain. Does London have a similar urban legend?

Well, London residents may not be faced with a decline in drinking water quality, but they may be faced with raw sewage leaking into their basements, backyards and workplaces. There have been several instances of this happening over the last month. Just last week the university I went to in London was faced with raw sewage seeping through the floors and walls of its basement café after a continuous bout of heavy rain.

With all this rain, and risk of the system getting overloaded, I wonder if there were a way to capture some of it for other uses…

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