Fake News Jersey - Example 2

"Guernsey's sewage system.....

There are 57 pumping stations which transport wastewater to the Belle Greve Wastewater Centre, where non-biodegradable matter up to 6mm in diameter is removed from the flow by mechanical screens. Grit, which would otherwise damage pipelines and pumps, is also removed. The resulting wastewater is then discharged through a long sea outfall pipe which extends more than 2km out into the fast flowing waters of the Little Russel.

Straight past our desalination plant."

Cause for concern? News that we are getting water into our desalination plant which could contain Guernsey's waste water from their sewage system is frightening stuff!

But it is the affable elderly friendly poster (whom I am not going to name) at work again on Facebook promoting Fake Jersey News once more. This is another example of a picture is worth a thousand words, except most of them would be lies.

The paragraph about the pumping stations is taken verbatim from Guernsey Water's own website:
http://www.water.gg/Wastewater-services

But the paragraph below that is strangely missing!

"Ultra-Violet (UV) rays of the sun and the natural wave action together with massive dilution provide the current bacteriological breakdown, such that any effects from the outfall are virtually eliminated once more than 20 to 30 metres away. This was backed up by scientific evidence provided by global water quality experts Intertek, who carried out an in-depth study of our bathing waters back in 2011"

Why doesn't our resident scaremonger mention that as well?

And consider this too - the shortest distance between Jersey and Guernsey is 43 km= 27 miles, as the crow flies. And the pipe outfall goes only 2 km out!

The current in the nice diagram shows how the current flows at a particular time of the day, but it is only a schematic - there are cross currents, and anyway given the total volume of water flowing past Guernsey, anything if it did exist would be diluted a thousand fold. 

And what is more, the flow is not constant.



As one commentator noted:

"X posted a single image of the Channel tidal flow at 4 hours after high tide in Dover. Lets have a look at the tidal flow diagram at 6 hours before high water in Dover and see if is still the same shall we? If you actually look at the tidal flow images for Dover, which X is using, you will see that only during the 3rd and 4th hours after high water in Dover does the water flow as he suggests. For the rest of the 10 hours in the tide cycle it comes nowhere near us"

My correspondent Adam Gardiner also commented:

"As for his allegation that Jersey’s desalination plant is drawing water from a mainstream of sewerage from Guernsey, that is laughable. Even if that were true our south coasts bays would be strewn with sewerage - and we would smell it. Our seawater is regularly sampled - and our beaches are internationally recognised as being amongst the cleanest in the world"

So no cause to panic, just another piece of misinformation. I do so wish he'd check his facts before jumping to conclusions.