Leaderboard

I think many people are unaware of the technicalities of this countries sewage treatment infrastructure. In this country we have a combined surface water and foul water piping system to the wastewater treatment works.These treatment works are designed to treat a certain flow of influent based on the population of the catchment area and their produced solids . Any influent flow above say 120% of the designed flow weirs over into a storm catchment system which basically is a series of tanks which can contain the overflow until the incoming flows subside and the contained storm flow can be returned to the treatment process. If the incoming flows continue to be of such a level that they fill the storm tanks they will overflow to the watercourse sometimes via a plot of land allocated for capture of the "solids etc". A further complication of this is that CSO's (Combined storm overflows)have been built into the pipeline infrastructure upstream of the treatment works to divert excessive flow directly to an alternative discharge point to reduce the loading on the treatment works .It is these that people generally complain about as they discharge directly into the water course whether it be river or beach. Without the CSO's there is a risk of flooding to upstream properties or areas as the system backs up . The problems can be solved by separating the surface water drainage from the foul drainage but this will involve an enormous investment to the infrastructure to dig up and change EVERYONE'S manhole connection system. Even if this could be achieved there may be further problems with blockages as there may be insufficient flushing of the foul drainage piping.. Privatisation of the Utilities section has had their bean counters sell off the spare land on existing treatment works for instantaneous short term profit which means there is no longer any capture or expansion land available and when the works need expanding to accommodate a increase in population new high tech and power hungry process systems have to be utilised to achieve what was previously done by gravity flow works and massive land area for biological filters etc. How can a price and delivery estimate be calculated changing such a vast infrastructure project which is at least 150 years down the line Pie in the sky I believe is the term.

Just had a message from Jerry, to say "She's home and towed beautifully".

We are once again a one boat family. Stingray will be returning to Cobbs, hardly seemed worth the effort bringing her up here. Jerry, enjoy. Terry.