{"id":131832,"date":"2024-06-24T07:51:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-24T04:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/fi\/news\/our-rivers-are-full-of-human-excrement-britains-sewage-crisis-is-seeping-into-the-election\/"},"modified":"2024-06-24T07:51:27","modified_gmt":"2024-06-24T04:51:27","slug":"our-rivers-are-full-of-human-excrement-britains-sewage-crisis-is-seeping-into-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/news\/our-rivers-are-full-of-human-excrement-britains-sewage-crisis-is-seeping-into-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Our rivers are full of human excrement\u2019: Britain\u2019s sewage crisis is seeping into the election"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mp_wrapper\">\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-message\">\n    <p>You are unauthorized to view this page.<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n  <div class=\"mepr-login-form-wrap\">\n            \n<div class=\"mp_wrapper mp_login_form\">\n                  <!-- mp-login-form-start -->     <form name=\"mepr_loginform\" id=\"mepr_loginform\" class=\"mepr-form\" action=\"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/login-2\/\" method=\"post\" data-trp-original-action=\"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/login-2\/\">\n            <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_username\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n                              <label for=\"user_login\">Username<\/label>\n        <\/div>\n        <input type=\"text\" name=\"log\" id=\"user_login\" value=\"\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_password\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n          <label for=\"user_pass\">Password<\/label>\n          <div class=\"mp-hide-pw\">\n            <input type=\"password\" name=\"pwd\" id=\"user_pass\" value=\"\" \/>\n            <button type=\"button\" class=\"button mp-hide-pw hide-if-no-js\" data-toggle=\"0\" aria-label=\"Show password\">\n              <span class=\"dashicons dashicons-visibility\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span>\n            <\/button>\n          <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n            <div>\n        <label><input name=\"rememberme\" type=\"checkbox\" id=\"rememberme\" value=\"forever\" \/> Remember Me<\/label>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n      <div class=\"submit\">\n        <input type=\"submit\" name=\"wp-submit\" id=\"wp-submit\" class=\"button-primary mepr-share-button\" value=\"Log In\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"redirect_to\" value=\"\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131832\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_process_login_form\" value=\"true\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_is_login_page\" value=\"false\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n    <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"trp-form-language\" value=\"en\"\/><\/form>\n    <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n    <div class=\"mepr-login-actions\">\n        <a\n          href=\"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/login-2\/?action=forgot_password\"\n          title=\"Click here to reset your password\"\n        >\n          Forgot Password        <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n\n      \n    <!-- mp-login-form-end --> \n  <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"smart_content_wrapper\">\n<p>Politicians are capitalising on the sewage pollution crisis with promises ahead of the general election. Endurance swimmer Joan Fennelly is undaunted by frigid water and long distances, swimming year-round in the wild. But she takes extra precautions in her own backyard. The River Thames is one of Britain&#8217;s many waterways contaminated with sewage and agricultural pollution. \u201cIf it looks right, if its smells right, I\u2019ll go in,&#8221; Fennelly said.<\/p>\n<p>Britain has become notorious as a place where a casual swim could lead to an extended visit to the toilet, if not the hospital. A torrent of news on dirty water has spilled into next month&#8217;s election to determine which party controls government for the next four or five years. While not a top campaign issue, it stinks of a larger problem: Britain&#8217;s aging infrastructure &#8211; from aging schools, hospitals and prisons to pothole-riddled streets.<\/p>\n<p>Bad water is decades in the making, tied to the privatisation of waterworks under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher\u2019s Conservative government in 1989 and to fiscal austerity after the 2008 financial crisis that slashed budgets for watchdogs and others.<\/p>\n<p>The British public discovered the extent of the mess during the COVID-19 pandemic as outdoor recreation such as canoeing and wild swimming took off. The sight and smell of faeces, toilet paper and other waste in streams and on beaches led to an outcry, along with clean water campaigns by some London newspapers.\u201cWe are suffering with shockingly poor infrastructure as a consequence of long-term underinvestment by water utilities who appeared more interested in paying shareholder dividends,\u201d said Nick Kirsop-Taylor, an environmental policy lecturer at the University of Exeter. \u201cThere\u2019s far more to it than just that, though \u2026 it\u2019s the culture of poor regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Britain had such an anti-regulatory culture on the environment that it was known as the \u201cthe dirty man of Europe\u201d in the 1970s and 1980s, Kirsop-Taylor said. That changed when it joined the European Union, but he said there has been backsliding since its vote in 2016 to leave the EU. While private companies have run regional monopolies providing combined water and sewage service, the population has swelled and industrial demand on the system has increased. Plumbing &#8211; dating to the Victorian era in many places &#8211; has not been updated to meet needs.<\/p>\n<p>On top of that, climate change has brought heavier rainfall to overburdened sewers. \u201cThe water companies have a choice: they either allow sewage to back up into people\u2019s homes or they open the pipes and it flows out into nature,\u201d said Charles Watson, founder and chair of River Action, founded in 2021. \u201cThat is why our rivers are full of human excrement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/green\/2024\/06\/21\/our-rivers-are-full-of-human-excrement-britains-sewage-crisis-is-seeping-into-the-election\">Read more&gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/green\/2024\/06\/21\/our-rivers-are-full-of-human-excrement-britains-sewage-crisis-is-seeping-into-the-election\">Euronews<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/environmental-news-en\/135657\/\">\u2018Our rivers are full of human excrement\u2019: Britain\u2019s sewage crisis is seeping into the election<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\">Vastuullisuusuutiset.fi<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1124,575,15033],"class_list":["post-131832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-britain","tag-environmental-news-en","tag-sewage-crisis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}