The Five Billion Pound Super Sewer

Episode
Episode 1
Broadcast Info
2018 (58 mins)
Description
London’s Victorian sewer network is at bursting point. Its tunnels are regularly pushed past their limit, and each week the equivalent of 300 Olympic swimming pools full of raw sewage is released into the Thames, totalling 39 million tonnes every year. Now a huge engineering project is underway, to massively expand the capital’s capacity to deal with its own waste. 20 miles long and 7 metres wide, the enormous tunnel will be created directly beneath the River Thames by an army of 4000 workers, that will capture this waste before it hits the river. The super sewer is the biggest upgrade to the sewage system for more than 150 years, but built 90 metres under London, it’s also the biggest engineering challenge for a generation. In a major new three-part series, our cameras have followed workers across the capital for the past three years, as they race to build the enormous tunnel on time and on budget. In this first episode, we follow the creation of the first stretch of the super sewer in East London. Lead engineer Emmanuel Costes has to build a massive 80 metre deep shaft that connects to the super sewer - and make it watertight using a specialist technique called ‘slipform’. It’s a risky approach, as it involves pouring concrete constantly for 15 days - and delays could spell financial disaster. We follow Steve Perry and his team at the treatment works in Beckton, as they attempt to install the biggest pumps ever used in Britain to deal with sewage. The pumps are critical - with so much more sewage due to head to Beckton via the new super sewer, each one has to be capable of pumping 3 cubic metres of sewage a second. If they aren’t installed correctly, millions of tonnes of the capital’s waste will be stuck underground. Originally built when the population was 2 million, the Victorian sewers now service nearly 9 million Londoners. We see how with this growing population, the existing sewers need constant maintenance in order to work at full capacity. With huge residential building developments being built across the city, a group of sewer technicians (aka flushers) are sent in to survey the old sewers, and plan for new connections. We follow Emmanuel, Steve and the team who are against the clock to finish the first section of the new super sewer, so it can be put to work in time for the opening ceremony.
Genre
Architecture; Engineering; Technology

How to cite this record

The Open University, "The Five Billion Pound Super Sewer". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/230901 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)