Some Thames Tideway photos - visible from the river and from the Embankment, including some from a 'Water Conservators' visit, a couple of years ago now, to the access shaft site close to London Bridge.
Below is the picture of the route of Tideway, 55 metres deep in places, 7 metres in diameter along with Philip Fletcher superimposed on the map who was part of our group and who explained the particular financing approach Ofwat had taken to support construction of the Tideway. Which included some level of Government guarantee as it was the European Union Wastewater Directive which was threatening regular fines on the UK government if it didn't address the issue of wastewater pollution in the River Thames. Being solved now at an approximate cost of $6 billion (at PPP exchange rates). This, by one estimate, to protect the health of the few rowers who fall into the River Thames each year, by another estimate, based on 5,000 'recreational users' per year 'leading to an estimate of the annual cost of the health impact of £22,000 per year', 'the corresponding discounted present value of such a stream of annual costs in perpetuity, if discounted using the pure time preference rate for utility of 1.5% specified in the HMP Green Book, is £1.5 million' (NERA, 2007). So $2m benefits against a cost of $6 billion. Aahh.
Then a picture of the works going on close to Blackfriars Station ... where the long covered over Fleet River discharges into the River Thames underneath Blackfriars Bridge ... which has apparently required some very clever engineering to capture that discharge and transfer it 100m or so upstream before it can flow into the shaft (with vortex) to reach the new Tideway tunnel 50m below.
And finally a spectacular photo from Thames Tideway of the first of the tunnelling machines being lifted out of the tunnel, having completed its journey from Battersea to just east of Tower Bridge.
