Month: October 2011

South West Water (or should that be South West Sewage – after all, the greater majority of our bills are for sewage rather than water) discharge sewage in such quantities that this summer, the Environment Agency and Torridge District Council banned bathing at Westward Ho!.

The reason is that the Cornborough Sewage Treatment plant cannot cope. Why not?

In 1974 , after the most detailed research ‘ever conducted in British Maritime waters’, a report was produced that concluded that only a long outfall pipe through the pebble ridge would prevent sewage flowing back on to Westward Ho and Instow beaches. Over the 2 year study marker buoys and dyes were put in the water to scientifically measure where the sewage would end up. An outfall at Cornborough was rejected on the grounds of expense because of the rocky sea bed.

So they built the new sewage plant at Cornborough, and they said, ‘ we will treat the sewage with ultra violet radiation and only in exceptional rainy conditions discharge from the old sewage outfall at Rock Nose.’

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The terrifying effects of the Japaneese earthquake and tsunami should be a further reminder to us that the earth, just like the oceans, can be beautiful and placid as well as tempestuous and indescriminantly destructive-and not just ‘over there’.

In the early 17th century an earth quake off ireland caused a tsunami that roared up the bristol channel and killed between two and three thousand people. In North Devon we can already see the effects of rising sea levels (go and look at the pebbleridge at Westward Ho!) and extreme weather is becoming more frequent.

What ever man builds, however well planned, constructed and protected, nature can destroy it it a sudden cataclysm or more slowly. When that construction is a nuclear power station, the potential devastation is almost unimaginable. Too many forget there are still three hundred hill farms in North wales where the sheep cannot be sold for human consumption because the land is still contaminated by caesium 137 blown in from Chernobyl.
Nuclear power stations are usually constructed on low lying land by the sea for cooling purposes. Yet the coalition government, like the labour government before it, is planning a new series of nuclear power stations at Hinkley point, Dungerness and Sizewell in Suffolk.

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