River Rhondda - Improving Water Quality

Improving Water Quality

The mining industry had a catastrophic impact on the quality of the river with all the mine waters being pumped straight into the river with no treatment. For very long periods, probably more than a century, the river was continuously black with coal solids and little if anything could live in the river. This was compounded by the very basic sewage disposal arrangements which saw all the sewage discharged into the same river. Not until the 1970s was there real investment made in improving the sewage treatment arrangements.

Since the early 1970s the river has been steadily improving in quality largely due to the closure of all the coal mines and through the investment in sewerage and sewage treatment.

Read more about this topic:  River Rhondda

Famous quotes containing the words improving, water and/or quality:

    “As in an icicle the agnostic abides alone. The vital principle is taken out of all endeavor for improving himself or bettering his fellows. All hope in the grand possibilities of life are blasted.”
    —Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)

    “It is so manifestly incompatible with those precautions for our peace and safety, which all the great powers habitually observe and enforce in matters affecting them, that a shorter water way between our eastern and western seaboards should be dominated by any European government, that we may confidently expect that such a purpose will not be entertained by any friendly power.”
    —Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)

    “While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.”
    —Maya Angelou (b. 1928)