Water, super-sewers and the filth threatening the River Thames

The Thames may be cleaner than it was in Victorian times, but it is still laden with sewage. As London celebrates 150 years of its sewer system, it seems that improving it is as politically fraught as it was in the days of the Great Stink

"Water is the giver of life," says the great-great-grandson of the engineer who revolutionised London's sewerage system. "That's why people always ask if there's water on Mars to support life. But it is also bringer of death, as we saw in the 19th century."

Quite so. Before Sir Peter Bazalgette's great-great-grandfather Joseph built 1,300 miles of sewers and river embankments in London in the 1860s, raw sewage flowed into the tidal section of the Thames and got stalled in a hellishly insanitary circulation system. The stench of what politician Benjamin Disraeli in the mid-19th century called the "Stygian pool" was bad enough referencing the River Styx of Greek mythology, which formed the boundary between Earth and the underworld but, worse, Londoners bathed in and drank this water. "Before the great embankments were built, the Thames flowed more gently so the shit went up and down and people were drawing their own effluent," says Bazalgette. If you're eating your breakfast, apologies for that last sentence.

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