Sewage pollution: Citizen eco-warriors armed with budget shed tech patrol whiffy river frontline
What can you do with varnish, plywood, a wheelbarrow inner tube and a solar panel not much bigger than a mobile phone?
The answer, if you are a computer genius with a conscience, is to fight back against sewage pollution.
John Clifford has created an early warning system.
He said: “When pollution spikes, if it goes up more than 10%, we know that something’s gone on in the river.
“When several sensors all at once that are telling us the same thing, then we know that there’s a big problem.
“The app on my phone will update regularly and quite often.
“It’s the first thing I check in the morning.”
Mr Clifford lives in west London and the kit will float on the River Brent which, like so many of our rivers, is regularly polluted.
Alongside colleagues he’s making at least 30 of these sensors which measure what’s called TDS or total dissolvable solids – shorthand for faeces, food waste and soap residue.
They send data on the level of these unwanted ingredients in real time to an app, but despite that sophistication they are cheap.
The floating gadgets, which are able to monitor pollution levels around the clock, are cheap
At around £100 per sensor they are a fraction of the cost of professional kit which typically can cost £6,000.
The team behind the tech, CURB (Clean Up River Brent), got together after local resident Ben Morris was outraged by an incident in 2021, which turned the river grey with sewage sludge bordered by soapy white residue and was very smelly.
They began with campaigning and clean ups, but he feels their gadgets will make the biggest difference.
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Mr Morris said: “Once you know what’s in the river, you can then start to have a conversation about what should be done about it.
“At the moment, there are too many unknowns about the sewerage system, too many unknowns about water quality.
“You get something like this in nationwide, we can really raise public awareness and political awareness, and then we have to have that tough conversation about what we’re going to do about it.”
Across England, there were over 300,000 sewage spills in 2022
And he is perfectly happy to get to grips with the dirty end of the stick too.
I join him mid-stream, up to our waists in the River Brent just beside a massive drainage pipe.
The water around us is flecked with fragmented toilet paper and twigs trapped beneath the surface are draped with a flowing beard of dirty tissue.
‘It does whiff’
Thankfully we are in waders, but it does whiff.
We are installing two types of sensor.
One is static, fixed to a stake hammered into the river bed, the other their new floating design.
It is tethered to a paving slab on a length of rope.
It has a solar panel on the top, a box of electronics beneath, sitting on the inflated inner tube while dangling below in the water are the actual sensors.
When the river rises after heavy rain, it remains on the surface and able to communicate 24/7.
This is important as pollution is often worse when the sewerage system is overwhelmed in a downpour.
Across England, there were over 300,000 sewage spills in 2022.
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The Environment Agency faces accusations of failing to protect our waterways but its budget has been cut by half in the past decade and Lewis Elmes, the area catchment coordinator, says they will gladly accept help from talented amateurs.
He said: “It complements what we’re doing, as it really increases the scope of what we’re able to achieve by producing a bit of equipment that’s so much cheaper than our much more expensive bits of kit.
“It really allows us to work to expand the boundaries of what we can look at in our rivers and the amount of outfalls that we can keep an eye on.”
River Brent’s own ‘Q branch’
The Environment Agency is trialling the brilliant shed tech from the River Brent’s own “Q branch” over the next year.
If it works the idea could go nationwide giving a much clearer, immediate picture of water pollution.
When it comes to fighting back, knowledge is power.
UK
Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after ‘prolific’ rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women
Another 23 female potential victims have reported that they may have been raped by Zhenhao Zou – the Chinese PhD student detectives believe may be one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.
The Metropolitan Police launched an international appeal after Zou, 28, was convicted of drugging and raping 10 women following a trial at the Inner London Crown Court last month.
Detectives have not confirmed whether the 23 people who have come forward add to their estimates that more than 50 other women worldwide may have been targeted by the University College London student.
Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth said: “We have victims reaching out to us from different parts of the globe.
“At the moment, the primary places where we believe offending may have occurred at this time appears to be both in England, here in London, and over in China.”
Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth
Zou lived in a student flat in Woburn Place, near Russell Square in central London, and later in a flat in the Uncle building in Churchyard Row in Elephant and Castle, south London.
Read more: How a student described as ‘smart and charming’ was unmasked as a prolific sexual predator
He had also been a student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied mechanical engineering from 2017 until 2019. Police say they have not had any reports from Belfast but added they were “open-minded about that”.
“Given how active and prolific Zou appears to have been with his awful offending, there is every prospect that he could have offended anywhere in the world,” Mr Southworth said.
“We wouldn’t want anyone to write off the fact they may have been a victim of his behaviour simply by virtue of the fact that you are from a certain place.
“The bottom line is, if you think you may have been affected by Zhenhao Zou or someone you know may have been, please don’t hold back. Please make contact with us.”
Pic: Met Police
Zou used hidden or handheld cameras to record his attacks, and kept the footage and often the women’s belongings as souvenirs.
He targeted young, Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study, before drugging and assaulting them.
Zou was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim, as well as three counts of voyeurism, 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of false imprisonment and three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol.
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Moment police arrest rapist student
Mr Southworth said: “Of those 10 victims, several were not identified so as we could be sure exactly where in the world they were, but their cases, nevertheless, were sufficient to see convictions at court.
“There were also, at the time, 50 videos that were identified of further potential female victims of Zhenhao Zou’s awful crimes.
“We are still working to identify all of those women in those videos.
“We have now, thankfully, had 23 victim survivors come forward through the appeal that we’ve conducted, some of whom may be identical with some of the females that we saw in those videos, some of whom may even turn out to be from the original indicted cases.”
Mr Southworth added: “Ultimately, now it’s the investigation team’s job to professionally pick our way through those individual pieces of evidence, those individual victims’ stories, to see if we can identify who may have been a victim, when and where, so then we can bring Zou to justice for the full extent of his crimes.”
Mr Southworth said more resources will be put into the investigation, and that detectives are looking to understand “what may have happened without wishing to revisit the trauma, but in a way that enables [the potential victims] to give evidence in the best possible way.”
The Metropolitan Police is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force either by emailing survivors@met.police.uk, or via the major incident public portal on the force’s website.
An 11-year-old girl who went missing after entering the River Thames has been named as Kaliyah Coa.
An “extensive search” has been carried out after the incident in east London at around 1.30pm on Monday.
Police said the child had been playing during a school inset day and entered the water near Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich.
A recovery mission is now said to be under way to find Kaliyah along the Thames, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out an extensive examination of the area.
Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope in North Woolwich leading into the Thames
Chief Superintendent Dan Card thanked members of the public and emergency teams who responded to “carry out a large-scale search during a highly pressurised and distressing time”.
He also confirmed drone technology and boats were being used to “conduct a thorough search over a wide area”.
He added: “Our specialist officers are supporting Kaliyah’s family through this deeply upsetting time and our thoughts go out to all those impacted by what has happened.”
“Equally we appreciate this has affected the wider community who have been extremely supportive. You will see extra officers in the area during the coming days.”
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On Monday, Kerry Benadjaoud, a 62-year-old resident from the area, said she heard of the incident from her next-door neighbour, who “was outside doing her garden and there was two little kids running, and they said ‘my friend’s in the water'”.
When she arrived at the scene with a life ring, a man told her he had called the police, “but he said at the time he could see her hands going down”.
Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope that goes directly into the River Thames and is used to transport boats.
Residents pointed out that it appeared to be covered in moss and was slippery.
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