Reimagining Sewage Infrastructure
This project, run as part of the Future Observatory at the Design Museum and with SOS Whitstable, explored ways to mitigate the impact of water pollution on the north Kent coast through a series of alternative, community-based design interventions that were innovated not only to decrease sewage pollution, but to also create novel community infrastructures and offer guiding principles for local government decision-makers.
Themes: Research, Design
Project team: Julia King (at LSE Cities) in partnership with the Design Museum and SOS Whitstable, funded by AHRC
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our time. It will have a significant and permanent impact on the water cycle. This in turn has serious implications for the long-term sustainability of the water and sewerage sectors in England and Wales.
Throughout the whole of 2021, Southern Water discharged raw sewage into waterways for more than 160,000 hours, with the average spill lasting 8.4 hours, according to Environment Agency data. Southern Water was fined £ 90 million last year for knowingly and deliberately dumping raw sewage off the south coast between the years 2010 and 2015. The company has vowed to change its ways, but many areas in the UK are still experiencing sewage dumping into rivers and the sea. A spokesperson for Southern Water in a recent interview blamed outdated Victorian sewer pipes suggesting that unless large-scale infrastructural investments were made nothing could be done. But this is not true. Circular thinking, decentralised solutions, localised treatment, and sustainable drainage are all methods that can reduce the amount of rainwater at source and reduce high pathogen discharge at outputs.
This project uses iterative design processes to test ideas and propose alternative green / nature-based infrastructural solutions. The project was undertaken in two phases: the first was a diagnostic survey of the current situation (which remains unclear with a lot of information held behind request forms) of the entire North Kent Coast following the Saxon Shore Way. The second phase explored design-led propositions to tackle the twin problem of too much water entering the sewer network and sewage discharging into the sea. The project is community based and cantered on a partnership with local activists, SOS Whitstable.
Communities up and down the UK are united in outrage, voicing their rage at the scale with which raw sewage is seeping into our waterways. Wastewater systems provide a critical service to society, and their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change places the health and sanitation of many communities at risk.
The aim of the project was to consider the significance of the impacts and implications of alternative wastewater systems in the context of an existing Victorian sewage system at breaking point. It investigated how the current situation is, proposed how improvements would and could manifest in different contexts and locations and concluded by suggesting a range of designs and guiding principles for local government decision-makers. The outcomes are also intended to serve as tools for local groups to engage with Southern Water and other stakeholders driving conversations towards tangible ways forward, and alternatives to costly large-scale, high-tech upgrades. Consequently, the aim for the project was also to simultaneously engage with local community groups and activists (primarily through our partnership with not-for-profit SOS Whitstable) to stitch together advocacy and calls for change with design and system thinking. The aspiration is to see the sewage problem not just as a technical endeavour but as a deeply social project.
"A thousand times, every day sewage is dumped into our UK waters."
"This is first and foremost not a design problem; it's a political problem. However, that political incompetence, that criminality from the water companies I do believe is propped up by a lack of creative ideas, a lack of creative thinking and a system that looks towards the existing system for solutions rather than looking elsewhere."
"We have never had to think about infrastructure because of its largely invisible, and hence normalised qualities and its now in this moment of such catastrophic and public breakdown that we can ask these questions – 'does design have a role to play in addressing urban inequalities?"
Our outputs
Exhibit at the Design Museum
20 November 2023- 1 September 2024
The main outcome of this work has been an exhibit at the Design Museum. Click here to read more.
Short Exhibition Film (also above)
October 2022
This short film was made for and shown as part of the exhibit at the Design Museum this short film
Talk on Design as Research (The World Around & Future Observatory)
March 2024
This talk was given at the Design Museum and touches on the sewage crisis in the UK, the importance of infrastructure, and how we can imagine sewage infrastructure differently and more creatively.
Listen to Julia talk about this work on BBC Radio 4
June 2024
Link here: https://lnkd.in/et-rwPFY
(Segment starts at 37m30, and Julia comes in at 40m25s)
Listen to an earlier talk Julia gave on sewage infrastructure and her sewage work in India
September 2019