Wastewater treatment specialists Graf UK are calling on housebuilders and developers to help improve ground water quality throughout the UK. David Stagg, their technical product doyen, explains why.
We realise that housebuilders and developers might not want to get their hands dirty when it comes to wastewater management but they are major influencers when it comes to the two factors that are driving this contentious issue.
One is that Natural England is increasingly “advising” local authorities to halt the determination of planning applications unless the developments can prove they will be nutrient (nitrogen and phosphate) neutral. High levels of these nutrients, which come partly from wastewater treatment discharges, cause excessive growth of green algae which smothers rare habitats and wildlife.
The other is an update to the General Binding Rules of January 2020. This is a bid by the Environment Agency to reduce the level of sewage pollution in the nation’s watercourses. Under the new rules, anyone with a septic tank discharging into a watercourse must replace it or upgrade the foul water solution.
While housebuilders and developers are required to select solutions for foul water drainage and disposal to Building Regulations Approved Document H, until such time as there is a national governing body for wastewater treatment monitoring, the Environment Agency, SEPA and NRW (Natural Resources Wales) are the individual organisations setting effluent quality standards.
These governing bodies have 100s of regional offices which generally operate independently, so are not set up the monitor this situation. In addition, approval for a sewage treatment plant is usually via a LA’s building control department, but as all LAs operate independently and already have large workloads, that’s an unlikely solution too.
While the haphazard monitoring of sewage treatment, in England and Wales at least, looks set to continue, some manufacturers have become self-monitoring in themselves, working more closely with, and even training and providing technical back-up, to the specialist contractors who install, commission, service and maintain their systems.
This greatly reduces the potential for sewage treatment plants to develop issues which could affect local water quality, and if they do, for the issue to be nipped in the bud.