Retrospective Evaluation of Cured-in-Place Pipe - (NEPIS)(EPA ...

INTERNATIONAL STUDY INTERVIEW REPORTS
The interview reports from international utilities are provided in this appendix including: Thames Water
(TW), Severn Trent Water (STW), Communauté d'Agglomeration de Chartres (CAC), Communauté
d'Agglomeration Les Hauts-de-Bièvre (CAHB), Göttingen Stadtentwässerung (GS), Technische Betriebe
der Stadt Leverkusen (TBL), Public Utilities Board (PUB) Singapore, Brisbane Water (BW), and Sydney
Water (SW).
C.1 Thames Water (TW)
In 1973, the U.K. Department of the Environment established 10 regional water authorities including
Thames Water Authority (TWA) to manage water resources and the supply of water and sewerage
services on a fully integrated basis. Prior to this reorganization, there were more than 1,000 bodies
involved in the supply of water and around 1,400 bodies responsible for sewerage and sewage disposal.
In 1989, under the terms of the Water Act, these authorities were privatized as water and wastewater
service companies and TWA became Thames Water Utilities, Ltd., the largest water and wastewater
service company in the U.K. Within the southeast region of the U.K., there are also a number of small
water service only providers.
TW has an extraordinary heritage including the construction of the New River in 1613, an artificial water
course built by Sir Hugh Myddleton that brings fresh water from the River Lee and Amwell Springs to
the City of London. TW also inherited the vast interceptor sewers commissioned by Prime Minister
Disraeli’s government in the 1860s and built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette to restore the Thames River. TW
was acquired in 2001 by RWE, a German Utility Company and is presently owned by Kemble Water,
Ltd., a consortium owned by Macquarie Group, Ltd., an Australian investment bank.
TW employs 5,000 staff and spends U.S. $1.5 billion a year to maintain its water and sewer network,
which includes over 20,000 miles of water mains (about 30% of which is over 150 years old), 100 water
treatment plants, 288 pumping stations, 265 reservoirs, 43,500 miles (70,000 km) of sewer, 800,000
manholes, 2,530 pumping stations and 349 sewage treatment plants (STPs) including Beckton, Europe’s
largest sewage treatment plant. It is the utility responsible for water supply, wastewater collection, and
treatment in parts of Greater London, Surrey, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Kent and the Thames Valley in
the U.K. Each day, it supplies 686 million gallons of tap water to 8.5 million customers across London
and the Thames Valley and collects and treats 740 million gallons of sewage for an area of South England
covering 13.6 million customers. Standards of service are set for TW by three regulatory bodies
responsible to the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). These are the
Office of Water Services (OFWAT) responsible for service quality and efficiency; the Environment
Agency (EA) responsible for rivers and other water sources, pollution and flooding; and the Drinking
Water Inspectorate (DWI) responsible for drinking water quality.
TW has for many years been at the center of the development and usage of techniques for sewer
rehabilitation. The first CIPP was installed in the Brick Lane Sewer, a century old brick, egg-shaped
sewer located at Riverside Close, Hackney in 1971 and many of the first CIPP contracts in the U.K. were
undertaken for TW and its agent authorities. TW Manager, Graham Cox, made the case for trenchless
rehabilitation at the Institution of Civil Engineers Conference ‘Restoration of Sewerage Systems’ held in
London in 1981, emphasizing that inversion lining was established as a well tried and proven method of
making full use of the cross-sectional area of the existing pipe. Cox identified that by 1981 over a
hundred successful installations had been undertaken in the U.K. in sizes from 4 to 108 in. (100 to 2,740
mm).
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