Nature-based solutions to sewage dumping on the North Kent Coast

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Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time. It will have a significant and permanent impact on the water cycle. This in turn has serious implications for the long-term sustainability of the water and sewerage sectors in England and Wales.Throughout the whole of 2021, Southern Water discharged raw sewage into waterways for more than 160,000 hours, with the average spill lasting 8.4 hours, according to Environment Agency data. Southern Water was fined £ 90 million last year for knowingly and deliberately dumping raw sewage off the south coast between the years 2010 and 2015. The company has vowed to change its ways, but many areas in the UK are still experiencing sewage dumping into rivers and the sea. This project explores the significance, impacts and implications of alternative wastewater systems in the context of the sewage dumping crisis in UK coastal communities. It investigates and proposes alternative well-designed, community-based, public infrastructure and guiding principles for local government decision-makers.The project will undertake two phases: the first is a diagnostic survey of the current situation (which remains unclear with a lot of information held behind request forms) of the entire North Kent Coast following the Saxon Shore Way. The second phase will explore design-led propositions to tackle the twin problem of too much water entering the sewer network and sewage discharging into the sea. The project is community-based and centred on a partnership with local activists, SOS Whitstable. The primary aim of the project is to consider the significance of the impacts and implications of alternative wastewater systems in the context of an existing Victorian sewage system at breaking point. It will investigate how the current situation is, propose how improvements would and could manifest in different contexts and locations and conclude by suggesting a range of designs and guiding principles for local government decision-makers. The outcomes would also serve as tools for local groups to engage with Southern Water and other stakeholders driving conversations towards tangible ways forward, and alternatives to costly large-scale, high-tech upgrades. The aim is to gain a better understanding of how events that stress the water network manifest, in order to give water companies alternative local solutions to reduce the impact on infrastructure. This will require bringing local people on that journey. Encouraging more gardens, sustainable drainage and designing civic infrastructures that simultaneously reduce the water load of our infrastructure networks through alternative decentralized sewage solutions for necessary overflows and doing so through connected, well-designed public infrastructures - green space, walkways, public parks, tidal pools, and so on. Communities up and down the UK are united in outrage, voicing their rage at the scale with which raw sewage is seeping into our waterways. Wastewater systems provide a critical service to society, and their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change places the health and sanitation of many communities at risk.