Sewage\sewer outflow\outfall\discharge pipes

Overview
It is a form of culvert, drain or sewer pipe that pours treated or untreated sewerage in to a major river, large lake or the sea. This is known as 'river drainage outflow', 'lake outflow' and 'marine outflow' respectively.

In to rivers and lakes
A sewage outflow\discharge pipe is a cheap, but dirty and ugly solution that produces a significant amount of ground and waters pollution which means they can't be put near farmland, water sources or beaches.

Lakes and rivers have been discharged in to by drainage pipes and gullies since at least Roman times.

Brighton sewers discharged a short way in to the sea 1874. The major London sewerage projects that lasted from 1859 and 1865 set up major discharge pipes along the banks of the River Thames in London.

America first made the even longer ocean going ones starting in 1910.

Some sewage was dumped in the Roden River ever since the mid 1970s and the GDR stopped this under a 1984 law preventing major organic waste pollution in the GDR's river.

In to sea
A marine outfall is a pipeline or tunnel that discharges municipal or industrial wastewater, stormwater, combined sewer overflows, cooling water, or brine effluents from water desalination plants to the sea. Usually they discharge under the sea's surface (submarine outfall). In the case of municipal wastewater, effluent is often being discharged after having undergone no or only primary treatment, with the intention of using the assimilative capacity of the sea for further treatment. Submarine outfalls are common throughout the world and probably number in the thousands. More than 200 outfalls alone have been listed in a single international database maintained by the Institute for Hydromechanics at Karlsruhe University for the International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research (IAHR) / International Water Association (IWA) Committee on Marine Outfall Systems.

The world's first marine outfall was built in Santa Monica, United States, in 1910. In Latin America and the Caribbean there were 134 outfalls with more than 500 m length in 2006 for wastewater disposal alone, according to a survey by the Pan American Center for Sanitary Engineering and Environmental Sciences (CEPIS) of PAHO. According to the survey, the largest number of municipal wastewater outfalls in the region exist in Venezuela (39), Chile (39) and Brazil (22). The world's largest marine outfall stems from the Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant located in Boston, United States. Currently, Boston has approximately 235 miles of combined sewers and 37 active CSO outfalls. Lots of outfalls are simply known by a public used name, e.g. Boston Outfall.

Advantages
According to the Australian engineer Sharon Beder the main advantages of marine outfalls for the discharge of wastewater are:

the natural dilution and dispersion of organic matter, pathogens and other pollutants the ability to keep the sewage field submerged because of the depth at which the sewage is being released the greater die-off rate of pathogens due to the greater distance they will have to travel to shore.

They also tend to be less expensive than advanced wastewater treatment plants, using the natural assimilative capacity of the sea instead of energy-intensive treatment processes in a plant. For example, preliminary treatment of wastewater is sufficient with an effective outfall and diffuser. The costs of preliminary treatment are about one tenth that of secondary treatment. Preliminary treatment also requires much less land than advanced wastewater treatment.

Disadvantages
Marine outfalls for partially treated or untreated wastewater remain controversial. Still according to Sharon Beder, the design calculation and computer models for pollution modeling have been criticized, arguing that dilution has been overemphasized and that other mechanisms work in the opposite direction, such as bioaccumulation of toxins, sedimentation of sludge particles and agglomeration of sewage particles with grease. Accumulative mechanisms include slick formation, windrow formation, flocculate formation and agglomerated formation. Grease or wax can interfere with dispersion, so that bacteria and viruses could be carried to remote locations where the concentration of bacterial predators would be low and the die-off rate much lower.

Technology
Outfalls vary in diameter from as narrow as 15 cm to as wide as 8 m; the widest registered outfall in the world with 8 m diameter is located in Navia (Spain) for the discharge of industrial wastewater. Outfalls vary in length from 50 m to 55 km, the longest registered outfalls being the Boston outfall with a length of 16 km and an industrial outfall in Ankleshwar (India) with a length of 55 km. The depth of the deepest point of an outfall varies from 3 m to up to 60 m, the deepest registered outfall being located in Macuto, Vargas (Venezuela) for the discharge of untreated municipal wastewater.

Outfall materials include polyethylene, stainless steel, carbon steel, glass-reinforced plastic, reinforced concrete, cast iron or tunnels through rock. Common installation methods for pipelines are float and sink, bottom pull and top pull.

Environmental cost
The UK's beaches and rivers were often dangerously unclean. Pipes that went to rivers and lakes were obliged to discharge only non toxic waste in the mid 1950s, with septic tanks being banned from discharging in to them in 2014. The EU made the UK seriously lengthen the ocean going pipes and obliged to discharge only non toxic waste in the early 1990s.

America enacted similar laws on the oceanic pipes during the 1980s and on pipes that went to rivers in 1972, 1974 and 1975, but the latter has often not been fulfilled for minor and sometimes medium sized pipes due to the cost of it.

The French had already done all of this in the late 1970s.

Later types Western and Middle Eastern pipes would be regulated by tougher legislation on there construction and the older pipes would mostly be removed by the late 1990s.

Politics
.

Controversies
In the 1960s the city of Sydney decided to build ocean sewage outfalls to discharge partially treated sewage 2–4 km offshore at a cost of US$ 300 million. In the late 1980s, however, the government promised to upgrade the coastal treatment plants so that sewage would be treated to at least secondary treatment standards before discharge into the ocean.

The submarine outfall in Cartagena, Colombia was financed with a loan by the World Bank. It was subsequently challenged by residents claiming that the wastewater caused damage to the marine environment and to fisheries. The case was taken up by the World Bank's Inspection Panel, which contracted two independent three-dimensional modeling efforts in 2006. Both "confirmed that the 2.85km long submarine outfall (was) adequate."

Examples
Short range ocean type:
 * Some could be found at (as of the late 2010s):
 * 1) Waterloo, Merseyside, UK.
 * 2) Portslade beach, Brighton, UK.
 * 3) The island of Seil, Scotland, UK.
 * 4) Pattaya Beach, Thailand.
 * 5) Burrard Inlet, Vancouver, Canada.

Long range ocean type.:
 * 1) Fourth Avenue North in Myrtle Beach, SC, USA.


 * Submarine outfalls exist, existed or have been considered in the following locations, among many others:
 * 1) Casablanca (Morocco).
 * 2) Cape Town (South Africa).
 * 3) Manila Bay (Philippines).
 * 4) Mumbai (India).
 * 5) Mutwall ( Sri Lanka).
 * 6) Wellawaththa (Sri Lanka).
 * 7) Lunawa (Sri Lanka).
 * 8) Anglesea, Victoria, Australia.
 * 9) Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
 * 10) Sydney, Australia.
 * 11) Barcelona, Spain
 * 12) Costa do Estoril (Portugal)
 * 13) Marmara Sea near Istanbul (Turkey)
 * 14) San Sebastián (Spain)
 * 15) Split (Croatia)
 * 16) Thames Estuary downstream of London (UK)
 * 17) Edinburgh, Scotland.
 * 18) Honolulu (USA)
 * 19) New York Bight (USA)
 * 20) Southern California Bight (USA).
 * 21) Victoria, British Columbia, (Canada)
 * 22) Santa Monica, United States (world's first)
 * 23) Boston, United States (world's largest)
 * 24) Latin America and the Caribbean
 * 25) Cartagena, Colombia
 * 26) Ipanema Beach beach from Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). This outfall, built in 1975, discharges untreated wastewater through a pipe with a diameter of 2.4m and a length of 4,775m at a depth of 27m.
 * 27) Sosua (Dominican Republic).

River type:
 * 1) The Ganges River at Varanasi, India.
 * 2) Springfield's Memorial Bridge on the Connecticut River, USA.
 * 3) At the confluence of the Seine and Red rivers in St. Boniface, Manitoba, Canada.

Lake type:

Also see

 * The 2018 Anglo-French Scallop Wars