You must log in or register to comment.
Thank fuck they’re cracking down on this rather than the water companies knowingly spilling raw sewage into our waterways.
Lol
For the last bit of a single coffee? That’s a fully organic compound.
You’d probably get the same fine for emptying a drum of used motor oil into it.
Not the Onion…
In Florida, rain gutters that flow to open waterways are marked as such with special reminders / warnings. Perhaps that would be a decent compromise here. Then one can’t say they didn’t know.
The UK only has one type of sewer, so the storm drains flow into the same waste processing plants as the toilets. However, those waste processing plants then declare an emergency due to unexpected high volumes and just dump everything into open waterways if it’s rained within the past week, which, as it’s the UK, it almost always has. There are multiple issues at play here, and they’re all dumb and foreseeable if you assume companies will do whatever is most profitable without breaking the law, and none of them are this person’s fault.
Ooooo…RFK knows where to swim next.
This… this is the “world news” today?.. Just wasting our time… intentionally im sure.
Woman does thing, UK Goverment offened.
“She was stopped by three enforcement officers”. Some fucking heros.
This is payback for the citizens arrest of Anglian Water CEO
This is one of those times it pays to actually read the article. The fine has been thrown out. Whatever patrol men ran up and fined her for polluting waterways were clearly overzealous and the council threw the charge out when she appealed it.
The storm drains in my area all have prominent “no dumping” signs on them, because they do drain to sensitive waterways that would impact wildlife and the environment if they were polluted. But I think the main thrust of this is keeping people from dumping their anti-freeze and motor oil and old gasoline and paint and shit like that.
So on the one hand, I kind of understand the instinct to say “hey don’t dump your shit there, that’s a storm drain” but obviously a few sips of coffee isn’t going to hurt anything.
At least it’s organic shrug
The article was updated a few hours ago but when it was originally posted and accumulated its first slew of upvotes, the fine hadn’t been rescinded yet and the only statement from the council was that their enforcement officers had acted appropriately and the fine was appropriate.
Also, in much of the UK, the surface water and foul water drains both go into a single combined sewer system, with areas that have been built up for centuries like this one being most likely to still use that old approach.
They clearly only rescinded it because of the media attention. The real story is that England’s councils are now so stripped to the bone on austerity that they’re hiring roaming enforcers to enforce fines on obscure regulations and instruments to raise money.
They must have run out of old ladies to arrest for tErRoRiSm
It’s not the cops doing this - they have to use speed traps to raise budget like everywhere else - it’s council “enforcers”.
Reading this it feels like you people still live in the middle ages, dumping the contents of shitpans out the window. ^^
Who is “you people” and how do you get that? I just spent the whole comment talking about how we don’t allow dumping in the storm drains.
Nevermind them, just a virtue signaling “vegan environmentalist” projecting because some lady spilled a few drops of coffee.
Ah, pardon your offense – 'twas a joke, signified through the use of “^^”.
Bottom line: I think it is ridiculously hilarious that such a small non-offense is being fined over there, by … ‘you people’. :p
Can we not all agree to say this entire debacle is … stupid? xD
Lighthearted; no offense meant nor intended. Enjoy your day!
Seriously. If you wouldn’t fine them for littering by dumping the coffee on the pavement right beside the drain (which it would washinto on the first rainstorm) then they shouldn’t fine them for anything by dumping it directly into the drain.
No one is going to get fined for dumping coffee on the sidewalk. But they might get fined for dumping oil or paint on the sidewalk.
Yeah that’s a good point. Can you imagine getting a ticket because you spilled your coffee?
The distinction here is she poured it into an outdoor gutter/drain, so a bit like littering. It’s a sort of thing if one person does it it’s probably fine but if everybody does it can be bad for the environment. Because what goes down outdoor drains is not usually treated. But even if it’s wrong at least give her a warning.
It’s only not treated because the UK has a massive problem with not treating sewage. In the UK, storm drains flow into the same sewers as toilets and go to the same waste treatment plants, where everything gets pumped out the same emergency overflow pipe into open water because there are millions more people in the UK than there were fifty years ago, and sewage treatment capacity is virtually unchanged because it’s cheaper to pay the fines for emergency overflow than to build more treatment plants.
That is not correct - the surface drainage system should be regarded as separate from the sewage system, even though both run under the roads. There is the surface water system and the foul water system. It’s true that in some places surface drainage may go into the sewage system but that is the exception rather than the rule. Surface drainage is usually designed to move as rapidly as possible into nearby fresh water to prevent flooding.
Surface drainage water is allowed to drain freely into water courses, rivers and lakes, completely untreated. The sewage system is for contaminated water (from toilets and sinks etc) and is designed to go to treatments plants where it SHOULD be treated. It is true that that treatment is not happening, and when there are storms the sewage system can be overrun with water companies currently getting away with dumping contaminated sewage into the rivers which is a scandal.
I’ve seen plenty of news reports say that combined sewers are nearly ubiquitous, but now when I’m googling it, I’m seeing some sites back that up, and other sites saying it’s only about a fifth of the country, so I don’t know which to trust. I can see Ofwat and some of the water companies say that the rules changed (potentially in 1991) so new developments after that point have to use separate sewers, and that wouldn’t be that much of the UK, as most building is redevelopment of existing sites where existing sewers can be reused, rather than new developments, and most things haven’t been rebuilt in the last thirty years, so I’d be surprised if it was 80% separate if it’s only new stuff using it, but less surprised if it’s just the Victorian sewers that are combined (and areas that still use Victorian sewers that have been spilling foul water into waterways) and things have been gradually switched over for more than a century. Do you have a source that explains the incompatible figures?
That makes no sense to me, because you will literally have feces from animals, dead birds and other animals, etc.
That’s kinda what I would think too, but coffee doesn’t belong there. If too many people dump coffee it will be bad, like this: https://coloradosun.com/2021/12/27/urine-high-country-lakes-colorado-caffeine-study-human-pee/
Enforcement action is only taken when
necessarythe small-dick bully boys find someone they feel safe intimidatingFTFY
I wonder if those officers knew it was illegal before they took up the job?
It shouldn’t be illegal. It’s a responsible disposal of an organic liquid.
It’s irresponsible; the rain gutters are for clean surface water wash off and drain freely into water courses, rivers, lakes etc untreated; they’re totally separate from the sewers even though both systems run under the roads. Organic liquids should be disposed off via the sewage system - so down a toilet or a sink - where the water should be treated before being released back into the water table.
If everyone were disposing of contaminated water in the surface drainage system we’d be in big trouble.
It’s a bit of a grey area.
Coffee is full of lipids, which build up in the sewer just like pouring oil down the drain. Coffee shops need a grease trap for that reason. (Google says UK does this, I know it’s legislation here in Aus, we mostly copy your homework anyway)
One small bit of a cup isn’t going to break anything, but infrastructure planning and legislation has to assume that a percentage of people will do it, some of them all the time.
I don’t think she should have been fined and I do think that 3 men ganging up on a small woman to berate her about a coffee is bonkers.
There’s certainly bigger fish to fry.
Well fryer oil is certainly going to gum up that drain.
I hope these officers get fines if they throw away that last bit of coffee before going on patrol.
Just pour on ground.
Where in France is that ?
