The Thames Tideway Tunnel

Book excerpt: Underneath the River Thames, one of the UK’s largest-ever underground engineering projects is taking shape. In 1858 the ‘Great Stink of London’ made much of the city along the River Thames uninhabitable. Between 1848 and 1854 nearly 25,000 Londoners died of cholera, a disease borne by foul water. Joseph Bazalgette saved the city, building sewers that would serve 4 million people and stop waste water emptying into the Thames. These remarkable sewers are still the backbone of London’s sewerage system today, but the city’s population is now approaching 10 million. The old sewers can’t cope with the needs of modern-day London and action needs to be taken to ensure that ‘The Great Stink’ never happens again. This is where the Thames Tideway Tunnel comes in: a £4.2 billion, 25km-long, 7.2m-diameter tunnel that will stop virtually all of the sewer overflows into the Thames and give us a cleaner and healthier river and city. The Thames Tideway Tunnel: Preventing Another Great Stink is the inside story on the tunnel, from the very start to breaking ground and all the steps along the way. Written by Phil Stride, a leading civil engineer, it is a unique chance both to see behind the scenes of an incredible civil engineering project that will transform the environment, and to meet the people who’ve taken the project forward over the last ten years.