London’s brand-new ‘super sewer’ is one step closer to opening

For infrastructure geeks, London’s brand-spanking-new ‘super sewer’ has been the gift that keeps on giving. Not only is the 25km, £4.5 billion Thames Tideway tunnel (as it’s official known) set to transform how the capital manages its sewage: it’s also led to cool stuff like a new Thameside embankment in Putney and an underground ‘botanical’ garden.

The ‘super sewer’ began construction in 2016 but soon, excitingly, it’ll start being put to use. With the project nearly 90 percent finished and its tunnels sealed up, it will begin testing this summer. Yep, this summer! 

The Thames Tideway project will connect dozens of storm overflow drains beneath the river. Rather than become a like-for-like replacement for London’s current sewage system, the ‘super sewer’ is intended to keep sewage from spilling out into the Thames during storms. 

‘Super sewer’ engineer Adrian Telford told the BBC that London’s sewage ‘was basically flowing into the river, and now we have diverted it and it goes into our new super sewer which is running underneath the Thames.

‘It will clean up the river, it will increase the health of the river.’

So, a cleaner Thames for all is now within reach! The ‘super sewer’ is officially set to open in 2025. 

Time Out and future London

London is set for a bunch of interesting projects in the coming months and years – and we’ve covered plenty of those projects on Time Out. Did you see that Printworks could reopen as a massive ‘cultural venue’? And that this Northern Line tube station is getting a huge revamp? And that the City of London will have 11 new skyscrapers by 2030?

Did you see that this London tube line has the most harmful dust?

Plus: here’s why Covent Garden’s historic gas lamps are so special.

Listen to Time Out’s brilliant podcast ‘Love Thy Neighbourhood’: the newest episode with Noomi Rapace in Portobello is out now.

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