Given our love of conversation about the weather, we’re never happier than when there’s a big storm brewing on the Atlantic and pushing our way. Now that we’ve taken on the North American convention of naming our storms after innocent bystanders (rather than climate deniers), we can begin to pinpoint exactly who is to blame as we bandy about our latest climate dramas. It’s a bit like a game of Cluedo: “I accuse Ophelia in the hay barn with the broken roof tile!”
Well actually, it wasn’t in the hay barn, nor with a broken roof tile. But Ophelia is guilty for something alright. The recent storms downed electricity lines around Ireland and the UK. One of the impacts was an interruption to sewage treatment systems. So what? Not as important as missing the Sunday game, you may argue. Well, for the fish, aquatic insects, birdlife, animals and people living downstream of malfunctioning sewage treatment systems it can be quite serious indeed. Life or death in some cases.
If we want to create sustainable, healthy systems to support us, we cannot rely on such a fickle friend as fossil energy for electricity generation to keep our sewage treatment systems running smoothly. Quite apart from the increasing potential for power cuts in a changing world, when conventional sewage infrastructure “runs smoothly” it is still heavily reliant on the constant use of electricity to convert biomass and nutrients into somewhat less polluting effluent before disposing to our rivers and coastal waters. Clearly in a world desperately in need of solutions that work, this needs to change.
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