Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
By 1900, with the rapid growth of coal mining, the iron, steel and associated
industries, the River Tame had become the drainage and waste disposal system
for the whole West Midlands and Birmingham conurbation and industrial
region. The economy of this region continued to expand until the 1950s as a
result of two world wars and subsequent regeneration (Bird 1970 , 1973 , 1974 ;
Hillier 1976 ; Parsons 1986 ). The regional economy began to decline in the
1960s and the industrial pattern changed with consequent effects on the
river, as we will see. 'Between 1971 and 1985 Birmingham lost . . . 29% of all
employment and manufacturing employment virtually halved' (Spencer et al.
1986 ). At the same time local gross domestic product (GDP) fell by more than
10% when compared with national GDP.
Pollution and degradation of the river
In the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exchanges of
fishing rights were important transactions along the Tame, but by the middle
of the nineteenth century pollution of the river was a major concern for fishery
owners and remained so for over 150 years (Harkness 1982 ). Before 1700, the
Tame was a noted salmonid fishery and supported a diverse fish community in
its middle and lower reaches. Little is known about the fish of the smaller
feeders and uppermost reaches, but the underlying geology suggests that the
water was acidic and probably supported mainly trout and sea-trout. Further
down the river, mills paid part of their rents in eels and salmonids until the
early nineteenth century. The biological degradation of the whole river was not
noted significantly until the middle of the nineteenth century (NRA 1996 ).
Indeed from 1831to 1866, the river in its middle reaches was used as potable
water but this was discontinued in 1872 (Harkness 1982 ). Eventually, potable
water was supplied from reservoirs in Wales and much of the base flow-water
in the river was chemically different from the original, pre-pollution water.
Despite the increasing domestic, surface and industrial wastes through the
nineteenth century, the development of gas-works producing gas from coal
and discharging highly toxic effluents appears to have been the final factor in
the almost complete chemical and biological degradation of the river (Spicer
1937 , 1950 ). By 1918, there were no fish in the river from the source to the
confluence with the River Trent (NRA 1996 ) and most of the invertebrate
fauna had disappeared from much of the upper and middle Tame. Below
Birmingham, the river, which had been a well used trout fishery for 40 km
before 1800, contained little evidence of fish or invertebrate communities (Spicer
1950 ). The worst polluted streams were the Black Country feeder streams (i.e.,
Oldbury and Wolverhampton arms of the Tame), the Rea, Cole and Hockley
Brook all of which carried metallic as well as gasworks effluents and sewage
wastes ( Fig. 13.3 ) . In the 1940s and 1950s, the reach of the Tame from near Perry
Barr to Minworth was devoid of invertebrates for some 15 km (Hawkes 1956 )
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