Hacker News Reader

Comment by krona | Hacker News Reader

You're arguing a kind of strawman of unbridled economic liberalism which hasn't existed in England since probably the late 19th century, if at all.

View on HN

Based on "a third of customer bills go on interest payments", I'd guess the original comment was about Thames Water.

In 2023 their interest payments were 28% of revenue. They also made the news for dumping particularly large volumes of sewage into rivers.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/dec/18/water-firms-us...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67357566

> they also made the news for dumping particularly large volumes of sewage into rivers

Yes and they have been fined for doing so, thus proving my point. These companies have statutory obligations. See the Water Industry Act 1991 and subsequent legislation.

So sewage wasn't dumped, because the law prevented it? Or sewage was dumped, and it was against the law?

I'm having a hard time reconciling the theoretical claims made in the thread with the blinding light of what actually happened.

Well sewage has to be dumped (especially in storm conditions), and the water companies have licences to do so. However Thames was found to be in breach of the license, so were fined.

Many people claim these things happen because "shareholders" however it was completely widespread practice to dump sewage before privatisation and the system is literally designed to do so. This doesn't make it OK, however.

Sewage doesn't have to be dumped. Simply separate your black water and grey water. Storm drains can go to rivers (if the rivers have capacity – if not, it's sometimes easier to give the river more capacity than to build more sewers), and the amount of water in sewage pipes will be independent of the amount of rain.

Sure, the sewers might not currently be designed that way, but that can be changed. (It's a logistical challenge, but it needs to be done.)

This is such a pedantic point.

How does it add anything to the conversation?

If a sewer system can be designed such that dumping sewage need never occur, you can earmark some of the budget for gradually introducing this property into your sewer system. The more such improvements you make, the less often you'll have to dump sewage, until you never have to. Thames Water could have done this.

We already know that more things can be done, in a better way, etc., if given more resources, more time, better decision makers, etc.

That’s true for all organizations.

Aye, the fact that the WHOLE system would cost trillions to upgrade doesn't stop anyone from upgrading it slowly in this way. The problem will still exist in 50 years, any progress is better than none.

They were fined. That must have hurt. They must have made a pinky promise to never do it again.

Subsequent legislations are EU directives (and associated EU fines), which are not as corrupted as local legislations, and forced the UK to start building the Thames Tideway for instance. The population chose Brexit though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com