Month: July 2021

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Unesco strips Liverpool waterfront of its world heritage status

The United Nations Heritage body have said that years of development have caused ‘irreversible loss’ to historic value of Liverpool’s Victorian docks. So Liverpool’s much valued world heritage status, which it gained in 2004, has now been stripped.

This an awful blow to such a lovely city. But it is a warning that Cambridge and similar historic and treasured cities should heed.

Cambridge is facing many massive development projects within and around the city. From large scale developments such as the train station development that has been rightly condemmed as “an embarrassment to the city”, to small quirky historic pubs like the much loved Flying Pig pub that is to be demolished for office blocks, to the upcoming NECAAP development on track to become the neighbourhood with the highest density of housing in Europe. It seems developers are free to profit from piling concrete block on concrete block and our city suffers.

Still at least Anglian Water will be building a Discovery Centre so that people can view the sewage works they are placing on greenbelt land.

Cambridge deserves better.

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Water and sewerage companies in England: environmental performance report for 2019

If you think the UK’s water companies can be trusted to manage greenbelt and protect chalk streams and drinking water aquifers from pollution, then read this report from the Environment Agency published last year on pollution incidents from water companies (Anglian Water and Thames Water were responsible for over 50% of such incidents).

Then read how Southern Water have just been fined £90 million for years of deliberately disposing of billions of litres of raw untreated sewage into the sea off the North Kent and Hampshire coastlines, to avoid paying costs of upgrading infrastructure.

He said the company had a history of criminal activity for its “previous and persistent pollution of the environment”. It had 168 previous offences and cautions but had ignored these and not altered its behaviour. “There is no evidence the company took any notice of the penalties imposed or the remarks of the courts. Its offending simply continued,” he said.

Finally why not look at DEFRA’s Magic Maps website that shows the risk of groundwater contamination below where Anglian Water are intending to relocate the Sewage Works.

HoneyHill MagicMapsGroundwaterVunerability

Worried?