“She was stopped by three enforcement officers”. Some fucking heros.
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.
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a few hours ago but when it was originally posted and accumulated its first slew of upvotes, the fine hadn’t been rescinded yet and the only statement from the council was that their enforcement officers had acted appropriately and the fine was appropriate.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They clearly only rescinded it because of the media attention.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
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?
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.
At least it’s organic shrug
Not the Onion…
This story is really poor and badly reported, as it doesn’t explain WHY the Environmental Protection Act 1990 has these fines in place and why what this women did was wrong. Instead it’s a clickbait story that implies the woman is a victim.
In the UK (and like many places) there are 2 systems of water drainage in urban areas - the surface water drainage (which is for rainwater) and the sewage system (which is dirty and drains toilets, home sinks, etc).
The surface water drainage runs eventually into fresh water such as lakes, rivers, and the sea, untreated. So if you pour coffee down a rain drain, it is contaminating the fresh water. It may seem ridiculous to fine someone for the dregs of one coffee, but if everyone were putting waste water in the rainwater drains / gutters it would have a detrimental impact on the ecosystem. It’s already a huge problem as people DO put contaminated water into these drains, probably due to widespread ignorance.
The sewage system is for contaminated waste; that water is collected and treated and either reused for drinking water or then released back into the fresh water system. Finish your coffee OR take it with you to a place where you can dispose of it into the sewage system.
She needs to pay her fine, educate herself and understand she is not a victim here. She did something wrong.
It’s already a huge problem as people DO put contaminated water into these drains, probably due to widespread ignorance.
You talk of ecosystems, but we’re talking about a beverage made entirely of natural biodegradable ingredients. It’s bean water. You may as well complain about the runoff coming out of a nature preserve.
What she did was right. It was safe. Your slippery slope would apply to bulk dumping or actually dangerous liquids. In reality, roads and roofs are covered with all kinds of dirt and things, all of which gets washed into the storm sewer every time it rains. But here you are pretending a quarter cup of coffee could possibly be problematic.
So all the diesel runoff from leaky lorries, tractors, badly maintained vehicles etc and, whatever else that gets spilt on the roads goes into our waterways untreated?
Plus Thames water has been releasing raw sewage into our waterways.
The fact that that happens is not a reason to allow free dumping into the storm drains though. There’s not a ready solution for motor oil drips that happen to leak from a truck. There is a solution to homeowners wanting to dispose of 4 quarts of oil after an oil change.
The dumping laws make sense, this was just a stupid application of them.
The solution was this…
Thanks for explaining
In the UK (and like many places) there are 2 systems of water drainage
Not necessarily, older systems tend to be combined systems where sewage and rainwater go down the same pipes and are treated before going into the river. London (where this story takes place) is like this as the system was built in the 1800s when they didn’t care about treating water before it went into the Thames. This becomes a problem when it rains too much and it overwhelms the treatment system so they just dump untreated sewage into the Thames like the good old days.
Then again maybe they’re building a parallel separated system to try and reduce the load during heavy rains. Ie. We were rebuilding this road anyway, might as well connect it to a new storm water drainage system instead of sending it to the old Victorian one, and that’s why they don’t want people dumping.
Your main point is correct for most people living in places that were developed in the 1920s or later, don’t dump shit in the storm drains.
This story is really poor and badly reported, as it doesn’t explain WHY the Environmental Protection Act 1990 has these fines in place and why what this women did was wrong. Instead it’s a clickbait story that implies the woman is a victim.
That has already been explained in the article. 👀
Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 makes it an offence to deposit or dispose of waste in a way likely to pollute land or water, including pouring liquids into street drains.
Thank fuck they’re cracking down on this rather than the water companies knowingly spilling raw sewage into our waterways.
They said she should have poured the coffee into a bin instead?! I think the garbage men disagree, they dont like liquids in the trash
Can confirm, binmen hate coffee bin juice
Based on the title alone I thought that she was a barista who poured hundreds of liters of coffee down the drain or something which might make sense. But no, just the last sip on her cup in order to prevent it from spilling in the bus or causing problems in the trash bin. Do they fine people if they accidentally drop their full cup too?
There are 9.8m people in London. If everyone was pouring the dregs of their coffee into the surface water drainage it’d be an environmental mess.
Contaminated fluids including dregs of coffee belong in the sewage system, not the surface water drainage system. This is literally the same as pouring coffee into a river or a lake - that’s where the surface water system is designed to run to directly, untreated. In London, that’s the Thames receiving that directly.
I throw leftover coffee into the yard by the car door when I find one, been doing it for 20 years and yard seems about the same, even with the recent drought.
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.
Apart from the stupidity of the fine itself, why is it 150 but only 100 if you can pay it in 14 days? Thats insane. “You cant afford to pay this fine immediately so pay more”???
Fines are for the poor.
Yeah thats my point along with my never ending horror of the capitalist dystopia we live in
Makes people less inclined to fight or ignore it when there’s a time limit like that.
It’s the same with speeding fines and parking tickets, and the white collar criminals that call themselves car park management companies. Many folk just pay rather than appeal, thinking that the time it takes to appeal will mean they end up paying full price, but I’m pretty sure the clock is paused during the appeal process.
I’ve contested many a fine, I fucking hate those parking sharks. The clock is indeed stopped until a decision is made.
Then it’s usually back to the original terms of payment stated on the OG fine.
I’ve even contested friends fines as well, I’d rather spend the 30 minutes appealing than let any of those companies get more revenue.
This is in the UK at least…
I got a speeding ticket in France and to contest it you have to pay the full fine (€90) and if you were successful with the appeal then you’d get that money refunded.
That is what happens when policemen can already read to understand the law, but are still too stupid to understand why the law exists.
This wasn’t police, it was council enforcement officers. People too stupid to get into the police.
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.
I’m glad that someone in the system had a brain
This… this is the “world news” today?.. Just wasting our time… intentionally im sure.
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.
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/
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?
