fawley before the leak

oil leak closer to home

not as big as what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico, but I was interested to read this on Guido Fawkes' blog as it is directly opposite 'our' beach. To state the bleeding obvious; oil and water just don't mix.

"The Environment Agency have been called to Southampton to investigate a leak in a pipeline controlled by American oil giants Exxon (Esso to Brits). It is believed this Yankee oil could be seeping into the English channel. Will the coalition now embark on a sustained trashing of Exxon’s share price? Guido can’t quite see Dave going round demanding to know “whose ass to kick”.

UPDATE : Exxon have got in touch:

In view of your latest blog and comment that oil could be seeping into the English channel, please find attached a statement from Esso on the spill last night at Fawley marine terminal. The amount of oil released is estimated at 20 barrels.

Statement 5 – Oil Spill at Fawley Marine Terminal

Monday 21 June 2010

We can confirm that at 9.20 pm on Sunday 20 June there was a release of oil from a pipeline at the company’s Marine Terminal at Fawley.

The incident happened whilst a ship was being unloaded. The offloading was immediately stopped and the pipeline valve closed. We are collecting
any residual oil from the leak site until the pipe can be drained completely. The amount of oil released is estimated at 20 barrels.

We immediately deployed our local oil spill response procedures and informed the Harbour Master and the relevant environmental agencies."

why are clean beaches important?

Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster

Simple and appalling - use the map to enter your home town and then get the scale of the spill in perspective.

http://www.beowulfe.com/oil/

the price of good beaches

Last week's Tonight programme on ITV was titled 'how safe is your beach?', and proceeded to investigate the cleanliness of sand and water on our nations beaches - particularly those rated 'good' that turned out to be 'bad'.

Tonight does have a habit of reducing important issues to sub-tabloid levels of hyper-sensationalism, but it was pretty well balanced and didn't get too over excited despite the use of a lot of rather nebulous stats. What exactly does a "one in seven chance of getting sick" really mean? Am I really going to get sick every seventh time I go swimming? I do worry that alarmist stats like that actually numb the viewer into a general sense of unspecific unease without helping to really press the case. We don't want people to avoid the beach - just take more care of it.

As clean beaches are the basic raison d'etre of this blog I was delighted to see the issue on prime-time, even if there was a definite sense of deja vu. The Beeb's Panorama covered the story in slightly more graphic style last year from Surfers Against Sewage's perspective and Tonight's version didn't raise much that was really new. They were obviously sparked by the release of the MCS' annual Good Beach Guide, which is a curate's egg of a thing, as the BBC website reported with a blindingly confused title, "More UK bathing beaches have excellent water quality than last year, but pollution has worsened since 2006, the Marine Conservation Society says. It rated 421 of 769 beaches as excellent - 33 more than 2009, but below the 505 rated highly in 2006."

I'm afraid that if you're being harsh that synopsis really reads as 'Some of Britain's beaches are a bit better than last year but they're mainly still shit'.

I did enjoy the part of the programme where the reporter gave the Environment Agency spokesman a deserved kicking and the poorly-chosen spokesman for the water industry twitched and flinched through the interrogation and just made his clients look as culpable as they undoubtedly are.

The idiot from the EA made the statement that you were 'more likely to drown on a beach than get sick from the water', which the reporter quickly informed us was rubbish - actually there's a one in a million chance of drowning versus the vaunted one in seven chance of getting sick. The man from the Agency quickly disappeared up his own fundament with gibberish phrases like 'I'm not sighted on that intelligence' and firmly proved that the EA has no control over the water industry it is supposed to police (it lets them record and reveal how often they pump poop into the oceans without any oversight), and worse, that its senior officials are happy to blurt out made up stats.

So here we are again. Another pretty good bit of TV that highlights a serious problem and reminds us how dangerous uncontrolled utilities companies can be, but what will actually happen to improve the situation, particularly in relation to allowing untreated sewage to be vented into the sea?

SAS reports that there are over "4,000 unregulated Combine Sewer Overflows (CSOs)" in the UK which are overflow pipes which release excess 'fluid' into the sea when the storm drains overwhelm the sewage system. The water industry seems reluctant in the extreme to do anything to prevent or even reduce the practice, but in a country where it has been known to rain a bit, it seems unbelievable that this 17th century practice is still so prevalent.

SAS are maintaining their pressure (see their article here), but they acknowledge that it will require more action to see significant change.

What no-one asked is why raw sewage has to be pumped into the sea at any time? What are the alternatives and why aren't they happening or being made to happen? The age-old argument that it's a problem of the the antiquated infrastructure that the water companies inherited can't be sustained any longer. Surely they should be obligated to find a way of keeping storm water and sewage separate. With BP having to shoulder responsibility for the toxins they're releasing into the Gulf of Mexico, so too should the water companies take responsibility for their mess.

From an economic point of view, the water companies' major costs are tied to the volumes of water that they have to treat - thus CSO's provide a handy reduction in sewage that they have to process, reducing treatment volumes and therefore costs. Just as a bye-the-bye, I read that Severn Trent Water has reported a 19% increase in profits to £541m for 2009/10 and

South West Water's pre-tax profits have risen by almost 9% over the past 12 months.

Profits went up by 8.7% to £132.5m.

A quick wild under-guesstimate.

4,000 CSOs each releasing 100,000 litres each stormy day (I imagine it's a lot more given that an Olympic pool holds 2.5 million litres), and guess that there are a minimum of 30 stormy days a year? Equals a rough 12,000,000,000 litres. Or a little over a European billion.

Even if you wildly under-guesstimate the amount of merdre being released by the CSO's around the coast, it adds up to a frightening amount of crap that really has no business being there at all and a huge saving to the companies' shareholders.

What to do? Simples as the meercat would say. Install flow metres on every CSO and charge the responsible company per litre that is released. Fair discounts will apply for the ratio of water to poo, but a base of 50p per litre would make the companies move pretty quickly I'd imagine (£6 billion by my spurious maths).

Reasons why not? None I can see.

Chris Huhne

Chris Huhne is the MP covering our much maligned beach in Hamble and I have met him on a couple of occasions regarding environmental issues. As a constiuency MP he was excellent - dealing with my requests swiftly and writing to the Minister in question (then labour) and letting me know how the follow up went.

And now he's Energy Minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change and as the Gruniad comments, he has the experience and power to make 'cleantech' a viable way forward for the government....

"At the risk of sounding like a mini Alan Sugar, what the Department of Energy and Climate Change needs now is to get business savvy.

We've had just about all the bureaucracy we can stand with the likes, as worthy as they are, of the Carbon Trust's carbon labelling schemes and the Carbon Reduction Commitment. To keep DECC relevant, what we need now is an effective green investment bank to hand out smart loans swiftly to support projects for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

We also need government to help businesses, especially in the engineering and manufacturing sectors, to save energy and innovate with clean tech products via small loans and tax rebates. In addition, companies investing in renewable energy production need clarification on the Renewable Obligation Certificate subsidy system quickly.

The arrival of Chris Huhne as energy minister at DECC is a good sign. He is aware of the investment needs of cleantech and, after his stint in the City as vice chair of ratings agency Fitch, he'll know how business and investors work, and hopefully how the department can work with them.

Unsurprisingly, RenewableUK has told me it is "delighted by the proposal of the coalition government to increase renewable energy targets". But Richard Gledhill, global leader of climate change and carbon market services at PwC, took a more reserved stance, explaining: "Chris Huhne… has got to keep the lights on and to keep energy affordable, at a time when public expenditure is going to be under huge pressure."

We will no doubt see an upward trend to energy prices as a result of various climate change levies, and DECC will have to be fair and transparent about how the money will be raised and where it is going.

There is also a need to deal with EU carbon pricing realistically. If the carbon price is to be useful to compliant businesses it needs to be more stable and to rise predictably; but that's a matter to be dealt with at the European level, and will take time. Part of this shift may involve supporting a 30% reduction in EU emissions by 2020, to lower the emissions cap.

His experience in the investment community will make Huhne more likely than most to spot the wise bets in clean energy. His more challenging task may be in overcoming the political obstacles along his way."

The guardian sustainable business section also reports here on more from Chris and the new green government...

bluebell woods

cutting across country to avoid jams on the M5 has its rewards