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Guernsey 2008

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 90 days.
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#1,381
sorry mag not really having a pop at you, well i was but i shouldent of.
Its just i beleave we should look after our planet so we can feed from it for years to come allso i have kids and my misses is moaning becouse she wont take them to beach. alltho i beleave in my views its not your problem sorry.
 
#1,382
No probs Leo, I wasn't having a go either. For what its worth I reckon your kids will be fine at the beach as long as it isn't between Bordeaux and Havelet.
 
#1,384
I've come back from the south west and you couldn't see your hand two feet in front of your face.
Click to expand...
Dived the tea place with the Milkman and OMD this evening, vis was appalling - after such good vis and fishy yesterday, today was the complete opposite :-(
two hours in, 3 people, 1 small bass for tea. really a shock at how different it was within 1 day. on the plus side, the water was ever so calm, just a swell running that was mixing it all up. looked like good surf at perelle.
good to meet you rick, hope it improves in the next couple of days :-)
 
#1,385
Hi guys,

I just can't buy that pumping out raw sewage onto beaches like Cobo is 'no problem'. We all know there is a viz problem this year, which should be well cleared up by now. Am I the first to suggest that the sea around Guernsey has become so saturated with sewage to the point that natural processes can no longer break it down? So now a pipe bursts, resulting in sewage being pumped to multiple outlets around the island. Sure pipes burst sometimes, but if we had a sewage treatment plant in the first place, perhaps they could still route the sewage there somehow instead of the only option being to pump it out on beaches in the summer! What a farce! It has been an issue since I arrived seven years ago and our local amateur politicians have outright ignored the problem. The sewage pipes are obviously so old and decrepit they are now failing faster than the states can fix them and I bet the problem only gets worse. There was a ship anchored outside our office in Belle Greve trying to fix the outlet for ages.

Anyway, yes I am a little bit upset by this. Sorry for the rant here but it has likely saved me a counselling session so its all good!

g.
 
#1,386
I was at the 'little harbour' it was a bit depressing to not be able to see the bottom in two foot of water.

Just come back from St Quay and while I didn't get in, due to poor vis, sluicing tides and long long lunches, I spoke to a couple of local spearos there and they also complained of the poor visibility over the last few months.

Going to try NW today and see how we get on.
 
#1,387
Anyway, yes I am a little bit upset by this. Sorry for the rant here but it has likely saved me a counselling session so its all good!
Click to expand...
:) I think most of us here would agree with you g.
I wonder whether having a treatment plant would only change the format of the waste, not the amount tho. When i was at Plymouth Polytech we did a survey into sewage treatment works - there were 52 raw (incl. chopped/shredded) outlets directly into Plymouth Sound & estuaries - that was a while ago... The poo barge used to make it's daily trips with a trailing wake of brown water... I know it has changed a lot there, but it does present an interesting alternative view.
I would love to know an 'expert' technical opinion on all this. Probably = more longer, newer pipes!

Hey Grob, NW!!! :naughty you'll come out glowing :) good luck but save yourself for next weeks Guernsey fish-in :)
 
#1,388
Jonny, I saw on the SW news a couple of days ago that Torbay is having exactly the same problem, and has warning signs on the beaches!

I know we all have differing views on this topic, but I think our visiting spearos ariving next week do need at least to be aware of the (potential) problem and to make up their own minds. Hopefully the seawater tests to be announced soon may help give peace of mind, at least for the west coast.
 
#1,390
I am surprised there is so Little talk about the other nasties that go down our toilets! The chemicals such as bleach & all the drugs like antibiotics that pass though our systems, they cant help the sea?
 
#1,391
Thing is Mart, normal sewage treatment doesn't remove chemicals. It lets the sludge settle to allow removal and treats it to remove bacteria, but chemicals just sail through.

I'm no expert but I have looked into it and nowhere in the specification of standard sewage treatment plants can I find mention of processes to remove things like bleach.
 
#1,393
nowhere in the specification of standard sewage treatment plants can I find mention of processes to remove things like bleach.
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bleach is basically salt water + chlorine. It breaks down very quickly. in fact bleach/chlorine can actually be added during the secondary/tertiary treatment phase of the effluent.
 
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#1,394
Ah right, thanks Jonny. I've been trying to find out what happens to it for ages! I had seen mention of it being added to the treatment process.

Can you put any rough figures on "very quickly"? Hours, days, weeks? I suppose once pumped, as saline water is a large component already it just gets extremely diluted immediately?
 
#1,398
Stop me if I bore you, but thought I might explain a little about sewage works. There are different levels of treatment, and treatments works will not all have all of them.

Preliminary treatment is essentially a big sieve to remove rags, branches,tampons, condoms, alligators and any other solid objects that end up coming into the works via the sewers. I think this is all that Guernsey has?

Primary treatment is physical - usually just letting the heavier stuff (grit and sludge) settle to the bottom and then removing it.

Secondary treatment is promoting bacterial growth and removing it and the organic matter it grows on to reomove both micro-organisms and nutrients. This also converts some of the more harmful (in a toxic sense) nutrients (ie ammonia) into less harmful types (ie: nitrates)- though these still cause problems such as eutrophication - overfertilisation of the receiving water.

For those of you who have fishtanks with biological filters (even the simplest type with a bit of sponge) the above processes can be seen as a scaled up version of the same kind of thing.

The above processes remove approx 90 - 99 % of the harmful bacteria.

Tertiary treatment is the final improvement of the effluent after it comes out of the secondary. Here is where any disinfection takes place if there is any. In the UK (and Jersey) UV light is used to damage/kill bacteria and virii (stops them reproducing I think). UV removes 99% ish of the marker bacteria (remember this is 99% of the between 1 and 10 % left from the original load after previous stages)

Bleach is not a huge problem, as mentioned by Jonny it degrades pretty quickly. If a large amount was put in just upstream of the works it might knock out the bacteria used in the secondary stage and cause a problem - but that would be very unusual. Chlorine is used in tertiary stages in America to disinfect the effluent, but this is frowned apon elsewhere as it hasn't had time to degrade when discharged and can have some polluting effects.

Hope that wasn't to boring.

As a PS - it is absolutely disgraceful that Guernsey is still discharging raw sewage - even via the long outfalls when they are working. This is akin to what happens in the poorest countries in the world.
 
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#1,399
Exactly 34 years ago I speared a British Record fish in Vazon Bay.
In those days we wore suits fashioned from cut-down lorry inner-tubes,
flippers were discarded circus-clown boots,hose-pipe section for snorkel, goggles from jam-jar bottoms and stones for weights.
I was over a reef in poor vis when out of the corner of my eye (ok maybe magnified by the 'jam-jar' lenses) I sensed a massive grey-green house rapidly approaching.Closing my eyes I feebly stuck out my pathetic apology for a spear( ex-bicycle wheel spoke) for protection and that, peeps,is the story of my scad (horse mackerel) moment of fame!
(Well,it's a little diversion from the sewage issue and the forthcoming 10 ft swell.)
 

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