{"id":403868,"date":"2026-02-02T13:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T13:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/403868\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T13:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T13:30:07","slug":"human-waste-rising-into-oxfordshire-homes-from-private-sewer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/403868\/","title":{"rendered":"Human waste rising into Oxfordshire homes from private sewer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The estates were built with a private sewer system after the water company told their developer its network would not cope with the additional load.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There&#8217;s babies on the estate, there&#8217;s older people,&#8221; Millard said. &#8220;Every time you flush the toilet the shower rises up. It&#8217;s just a nightmare.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The private sewage system for the two estates involves huge underground holding tanks.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Waste from the roughly 60 homes goes into the tanks and is pumped into the public sewer at a controlled rate, or at off peak times, to avoid putting extra pressure on the system.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With the tanks unable to empty, residents are paying for tankers to come and suck out some of the sewage and drive it to a treatment works.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Resident Stuart Tyrrell said: &#8220;The tankers basically just buy us some time. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We had 16,000 litres removed and it lasted probably four or five hours [before the system was full again].&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Recent heavy rain also left Thames Water&#8217;s sewage treatment works at capacity, so it had to stop accepting tankers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The estates were built with a private sewer system after the water company told their developer its network&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-403868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}