Parched City (30 page)

Sue Pennison, an agrichemicals expert at the DWI, is aggrieved that the word pesticide immediately raises alarm bells for many people: ‘All pesticides have to be assessed for their effect on vertebrates, invertebrates, all of the food chain…’
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Her defence of the potential toxicity of some products is reassuring on one level, but to meet the minimum legal standards for the concentration of such substances in the public water supply, great expense is clearly involved. In this respect, the polluter is certainly not paying anything. Our Rivers, an environmental campaigning coalition, including the World Wildlife Fund (UK) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, argues that the cost of this ‘diffuse pollution’ (pollution from a range of
unknown, multiple sources) is a clean-up cost that is met by the water companies and therefore ultimately water consumers.
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The same group also questions the Environment Agency’s efficacy in preventing diffuse pollution of rivers. Criminal charges can be brought against perpetrators under Environmental Permitting regulations, with fines of up to £50,000 if convicted.
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Viable alternatives to synthetic pesticides do exist. Organic pesticide use is advocated by the Soil Association, which has published a comprehensive list of products that registered organic farmers must use.
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There are plenty of slug-killing options that the Association recommends, proving that substances such as metaldehyde are not essential, even to farms not registered as strictly organic.

Whilst pesticide politics continue, the 1980’s concern about the organic chemicals (trihalomethanes) produced during chlorine treatment has abated. Steve White believes the furore that trihalomethanes caused in the water research community was an over-reaction to the early evidence of their toxicity: ‘We’ve now got a more rounded view, so the [current] WHO guidelines for trihalomethanes are more relaxed than they were back in the mid-eighties.’ Therefore, the use of chlorine in water treatment has survived into the twenty-first century, but, interestingly, not primarily as a disinfectant. Colbourne gets excited about this point, exclaiming: ‘There’s no law in this country that says you must add chlorine to the water; there never has been.’ The Inspector adds: ‘What is a legal requirement, is to disinfect the water but that doesn’t mean using chlorine and in fact many water companies don’t use chlorine as the primary treatment these days.’ (Remember, Houston only introduced chlorination in 1916 when ordinary water treatment processes were threatened by potential coal, and therefore power, shortages for filtration and pumping.) The Netherlands has controversially pioneered the production of chlorine-free public water supplies. Disinfection can now be assured with new technologies and
processes such as fine membranes, ozone or ultraviolet treatments. Chlorine’s role in London is apparently a matter of ‘hygiene’ rather than disinfection per se. By this, Colbourne means that low levels of ‘residual chlorine’ are added to the treated water at the very last stage of the treatment process to protect it, particularly in London, on the long distribution network from the treatment plant to the tap (some Londoners have valid concerns about the hygiene of the pipes between treatment plants and their homes, which is a topic that Thames Water would do well to discuss publicly). It is the accepted use of such chemical processes that we should reasonably question as water consumers, to understand why they are necessary in perpetuity, if they indeed are. Why do water industry professionals believe their use should not be a health concern? Such questions need to be publicly, transparently debated so that scientists can unpack the expertise informing these treatment choices. But first, let us return to the production line.

During chlorination, either by gas or liquid, the water moves through maze-like structures called baffles, so that no water escapes treatment. Ammonia is also used to prevent any adverse reaction between the chlorinated water and iron pipes, which could potentially cause a more discernible flavour of the chemical’s residue.

Acceptability

In Steve White’s department of Thames Water, a revolving team test the final drinking water product for taste and odour at least five days a week. He relays how tasters only make the grade if they pass a vital stage of sampling stock solutions. These ‘organoleptic’ tests also involve using smell and sight to evaluate the water sample. If a taster fails to identify its contents correctly, she or he is instantly dismissed from the water-tasting elite as not ‘fit for the task’. Fortunately, it seems that Thames Water has enough staff with sufficient olfactory, visual and taste-bud
talents to make the grade. This rather more subjective aspect of the drinking water world is tied to another critical concept to the legal requirements of the water companies: acceptability. Regardless of what scientists might say about the quality of the drinking water that has been supplied to a household, if the Drinking Water Inspectorate can prove that a reasonable consumer does finds the appearance, odour or taste of their water to be unacceptable, the water company has failed to supply wholesome drinking water. Coincidentally, I made a ‘phone call to Thames Water with such a legitimate complaint about my water flavour, coincidentally during this research, and the person in the company’s call centre had no idea what I was talking about when I said that my drinking water was ‘unacceptable’. Nobody called me back to arrange an inspection and, after a couple of days, my tap water tasted normal and I let the matter drop.

The importance of ‘acceptability’ as a value has been enshrined in the World Health Organisation’s drinking water guidelines since they were established in the 1950s. In less industrialised and democratic global locations, this can be a critical protection for communities where the assurance of safe water supplies can be a lottery. As Colbourne qualifies: ‘If water’s not acceptable, it still could be safe…but if they [members of a community] reject the water because it looks dirty, that’s an unsafe thing because they will go off and find another water source that may appear clear but could have harmful things in it.’ Acceptability is legally sheltered under the umbrella of wholesome and it is a concept that Colbourne notes ‘most lay people don’t understand’. This is a shame because it is a critical consumer right. The term certainly does not pop up with an easy explanation in a search of the DWI, Consumer Council for Water or Thames Water websites.
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It is another example of insider knowledge confined to the realm of experts and industry jargon, rather than being deliberately withheld from the larger public.

Recycled Tap Water

One sure way to arouse a sense that water might be unacceptable is the often-posed argument that the average glass of London tap water has passed through several other bodies and kidneys before it reaches the kitchen tap. What does this claim actually mean? Surely the very basis of the hydrological cycle is the constant re-use of water?

Both the unfounded fears and the realities of water pollutants are tied to the persistent myth that London’s supplies have been ingested and excreted by several bodies because of the population size, i.e. that the capital’s drinking water is somehow
more
recycled than other towns or cities’ drinking water.

On this subject, Steve White offers what sounds like a stock response to people who query the reality of this myth: ‘All water’s recycled. It’s been through whales kidneys!’ To separate what is mythical about London’s drinking water from fact, it is essential to define what recycled water is imagined to be. When White uses the image of the whale, he is quite simply referring to the hydrological cycle in which water flows from rivers to the sea, evaporating into clouds, then becomes rain and so on. Water by its physical nature is impossible to trace precisely because of its natural mutability. As a chemical compound however, a strong characteristic of water is its efficiency as a solvent. So when we think about recycled water, we are conscious of what used to be dissolved and carried along with those molecules of H
₂
0 and therefore what traces of those other substances might still remain concentrated in our water supply.

For instance, an issue that gained prominence in the mid-90s was that London’s drinking water contained higher concentrations of substances derived from the birth control pill than elsewhere in Britain. Concern that this was causing oestrogenic effects was aroused when
The Lancet
medical journal published the results of a study into male sperm count in the Thames Water region.
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If the fertility of male Londoners was under siege from
tap water, it would actually have been as a result of pill consumption upstream, in Oxford or Reading, rather than within the capital itself. The mainstream press picked up on the research. An article in
The Independent
fanned the popular scientific speculation by failing to mention that other environmental factors had not been ruled out in the study.
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Further flurries of publicity erupted and subsequent levels of public concern led to Europe-wide research into the plausibility of residual substances from the birth control pill being present in public drinking water supplies.
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Scientists arrived at two conclusions. First, the chemical’s presence at points of abstraction was rarely detected and could therefore be ruled out as a public threat on that basis. Second, where it was identified as a minor chemical constituent of abstracted raw water, conventional water treatment was found to eradicate all traces of these synthetic chemicals.
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As the Drinking Water Inspectorate’s information leaflet on endocrine disruptors states: ‘The perception that London’s drinking water is particularly at risk is also a myth…‘
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Testing for other pharmaceuticals follows a similar research protocol devised for the contraceptive pill, to detect any instances where abstracted water requires treatment for ‘nanogram levels’ of any substance (1 part in 1 million times 1 million).
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Chemicals can be eliminated as a threat using this methodology. Colbourne explains that ‘you don’t go testing for substances that you’ve done the tests for, to show that they can’t possibly get into water’. Caffeine is routinely used as a barometer for concentrations of what might be entering the water, at the sewage effluent stage, because it is so widely excreted after tea and coffee consumption. If caffeine is present, that suggests that other human waste products might also be.

Another more psychologically unsettling association with tap water’s production is how we imagine wastewater evolving into drinking water. This perception forms a staple criticism of London’s tap water as a densely populated place. Treated sewage does flow into the Lee and Thames upstream of where London’s
drinking water is eventually abstracted, but that effluent is not from London but places upstream of the capital. 95% of London’s permitted sewage effluent discharges enter the Thames in its tidal part, with the closest point of discharge to the capital being Beckton. A 2004 Environment Agency report stated: ‘There are large consented discharges of treated sewage effluent directly or near-directly into the River Thames as Cirencester, Oxford, Abingdon, Reading, Little Marlow, Windsor and Kingston-Upon-Thames.’
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Jeni Colbourne rather nonchalantly explains how ‘at the top of the Thames on the route to where London’s water supply is abstracted out into the big reservoirs, there are some towns’ effluents that go in, at a volume that overall helps to add to the mass balance but at a quality that supports the life in that river and encourages nature’s processes of purification all the way down the river’. Her logic is clear, but visualising the effluent itself is less so.
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These ‘point source’ effluent discharges from sewage treatment works are considered by experts to be of far less concern than untreated, and often unknown, agricultural effluent. Demystifying wastewater’s contents and quality might reassure those ‘recycled water’ sceptics, however finding such details is rather a smoke and mirrors affair. On the Environment Agency’s website, which polices the permitted quality of these discharges, no easy definition of sewage effluent pops up in a search. Any relevant, jargon-laden, documents are targeted at water industry professionals, or representatives from businesses who need to comply with discharge regulations, and these seem to assume that the reader is already well versed in effluent speak. Fortunately, the European Union’s website has a handy ‘urban waste water’ glossary for the novice. Two helpful explanations reveal that effluent can be discharged after either primary or secondary treatment, depending on how the receiving water is categorised in terms of sensitivity i.e. industrial wastewater or domestic sewage.
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In terms of future abstractions for drinking
water the need for secondary treatment is evaluated by levels of remaining nitrate concentration. Other secondary treatment issues relate to wildlife protection in the areas local to the point of discharges. Effluent quality is determined by the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water, which indicates if there is a microbiological population and therefore the presence of sewage, or not; a standard known as BOD5.
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A clear explanation of sewage effluent does not surface in multiple searches on the DWI or Thames Water websites, nor how the substance’s discharge relates to rivers and subsequent drinking water abstraction. What we do know is that all harmful bacteria and viruses are removed from sewage through the combined processes of wastewater treatment, natural river purification and drinking water treatment. However, clearer information about sewage treatment and effluent quality would be a helpful demystification of the high-technological realm of effluent production and management. If this information was available, tales of recycled water could at least be more factually grounded and some Londoners might obsess a little less about water purity.

Many non-water professionals might not be aware of the Water Framework Directive’s significance. This ambitious piece of European environmental policy was integrated into English and Welsh law in 2003. Implementation of the plans to achieve ‘good status’ for all ground and surface waters by 2015 is now in motion. An Environment Agency document summarises that ‘DrWPAs will be designated as safeguard zones that will have investigations and measures applied’.
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These designated zones could be compared to the land owned by bottled water companies which they closely protect to ensure their products’ purity and therefore ongoing profitability. Back in 1989, the authors of
Britain’s Poisoned Water
mentioned that trials of such ‘water-protection zones’ had been effective in West Germany, Italy and Switzerland. The time lag between then and current policy implementation is frustratingly long. Drinking Water
Protection Areas success as a project remains to be seen but for it to succeed illegal diffuse water pollution will have to cease, permanently.