A river worker has criticised Thames Water for allowing polluted water to flow into fragile rivers that could have killed numerous fish.
Sandy Belloni, who runs a local action group called Community Connections Project, said he found a number of “suspect storm tanks” in Watford that regularly pour polluted water into the Colne that he believes might have killed fish in late August.
Mr Belloni said he spotted these ‘storm tanks’ in three places - one under Beechen Grove, one by Radlett Road (above the ditch) and one at Riverwell.
According to the river worker, Thames Water pumped out the ‘storm tank’ under Beechen Grove about a year and a half ago for a couple of months, and did the same with the Riverwell one at about the same time and says they’ve pumped the Radlett Road one numerous times in the last few years.
He continued: “One of the things I’d like is clearer communication on maintenance schedules and responsibilities for specific assets, with access to sampling data from Thames Water.”
Mr Belloni also revealed that a new 24-house development where “all the foul water was coming out into the surface water outfall in Oxhey Park” was denied about being a misconnection for over a year by Thames Water.
He added: “I have the emails, and at one point they suggested it was rough sleepers - lots of rag and excrement. Eventually they accepted it was this 24-house development and connected it correctly.”
Thames Water has provided further information about what Sandy Belloni has called ‘storm tanks’.
The tanks on Beechen Grove, by Radlett Road and at Riverwell are ‘surface water tanks’, which provide additional storage capacity to help manage surface water flows - preventing flooding, and can help prevent oil and floating debris in the surface water (rainwater) from being discharged into the river. These are not tanks for storing or treating sewage.
A Thames Water spokesperson said: “Our aim will always be to try and do the right thing for our rivers and for the communities who love and value them and we greatly admire Sandy for his hard work to protect the rivers in and around Watford.
“We work hard to track misconnections, but identifying them and tracing them back to the source isn’t always easy and it’s thanks to the help of community groups and residents we’re able to identify more.”
The company recommends ensuring toilets, showers, and appliances such as washing machines and dishwashers, are correctly connected to the foul sewer system and not to surface water pipes.
Customers can also help prevent blockages, which can cause wastewater to back up into the environment and into surface water drains, by only flushing ‘The Three Ps’ - pee poo and toilet paper.
The spokesperson added: “We initially misdiagnosed the source of the misconnection at Oxhey Park and we’d like to thank Sandy for bringing this to our attention.
“After further investigation we found a manhole flowing from the development which was wrongly connected to the surface water system, and we had this correctly connected to our wastewater network.”
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