#sewers — Public Fediverse posts

https://www.europesays.com/videos/10915/ Man jailed for life for murder has conviction quashed | ITV Meridian (Thames Valley) #author #capybara #dogs #endoscopy #fire #Hampshire #hospital #itv #ItvNews #ITVNewsInFull #itvmeridian #ITVNews #leaks #sewers #SouthamptonHospital #SouthernWater #SpyThriller #Sussex #TomBradby #TvDrama #water #wildlife

https://www.europesays.com/videos/10877/ The dogs trained to sniff out problems in our sewers and stop water waste | ITV Meridian (West) #author #capybara #dogs #endoscopy #fire #Hampshire #hospital #itv #ItvNews #ITVNewsInFull #itvmeridian #ITVNews #leaks #sewers #SouthamptonHospital #SouthernWater #SpyThriller #Sussex #TomBradby #TvDrama #water #wildlife

https://www.europesays.com/people/16713/ The Pujols and Sanchez’s father-in-law’s saunas: the audios that connect the sewers of the PP and PSOE #and #audios #connect #father #in #law #of #PedroSánchez #PP #psoe #pujols #s #sánchez #saunas #sewers #that #the

“Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. A new technology does not merely add something; it changes everything”*…

Insofar as (at the risk of sounding tautological) transformative technologies are concerned, Neil Postman is surely right. But then, as Roy Amara pointed out, “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” David Oks uses a common myth of technological replacement to illustrate– and more specifically, to observe that there’s a lot more to replacing labor than just automating tasks.

He begins by recounting an interview a few months ago of J. D. Vance by Ross Douthat in which (in response to a question from Douthat about the potential downsides of AI, in particular the prospect of its “obsoleting” human workers) Vance responded sanguinely, arguing that ATM machines didn’t eliminate bank tellers. Indeed, Vance suggested, “we have more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created, but they’re doing slightly different work…”

There are two interesting things about what Vance said, both relating to the example that he chose about bank tellers and ATMs.

The first thing is what it tells us about who J. D. Vance is. The bank teller story—how ATMs were predicted to increase bank teller unemployment, but in fact did not—isn’t a story you’ll hear from politicians; in fact, for a long time, Barack Obama would claim, incorrectly, that ATMs had decreased the number of bank tellers, in order to suggest that the elevated unemployment rate during his presidency was due to productivity gains from technology. I’ve never heard a politician cite the bank teller story before: but I have seen the bank teller story cited in a lot of blogs. I’ve seen it cited, for example, by Scott Alexander and Matt Yglesias and Freddie deBoer; and I’ve heard it, upstream of the humble bloggers, from such fine economists as Daron Acemoglu and David Autor. The story of how ATMs didn’t automate bank tellers is, indeed, something of a minor parable of the economics profession…

… But the other thing about the bank teller story that Vance cites is that it’s wrong. We do not, contrary to what Vance claims, have “more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created”: we in fact have far fewer. The story he tells Douthat might have been true in 2000 or 2005, but it hasn’t been true for years. Bank teller employment has fallen off a cliff. Here is a graph of bank teller employment since 2000:

So what happened to bank tellers? Autor, Bessen, Vance, and the like are right to point out that ATMs did not reduce bank teller employment. But they miss the second half of the story, which is that another technology did. And that technology was the iPhone. The huge decline in bank teller employment that we’ve seen over the last 15-odd years is mainly a story about iPhones and what they made possible.

But why? Why did the ATM, literally called the automated teller machine, not automate the teller, while an entirely orthogonal technology—the iPhone—actually did?

The answer, I think, is complementarity.

In my last piece, on why I don’t think imminent mass job loss from AI is likely, I talked a lot about complementarity. The core point I made was that labor substitution is about comparative advantage, not absolute advantage: the relevant question for labor impacts is not whether AI can do the tasks that humans can do, but rather whether the aggregate output of humans working with AI is inferior to what AI can produce alone. And I suggested that given the vast number of frictions and bottlenecks that exist in any human domain—domains that are, after all, defined around human labor in all its warts and eccentricities, with workflows designed around humans in mind—we should expect to see a serious gap between the incredible power of the technology and its impacts on economic life.

That gap will probably close faster than previous gaps did: AI is not “like” electricity or the steam engine; an AI system is literally a machine that can think and do things itself. But the gap exists, and will exist even as the technology continues to amaze us with what it can now accomplish.

But by talking about why ATMs didn’t displace bank tellers but iPhones did, I want to highlight an important corollary, which is that the true force of a technology is felt not with the substitution of tasks, but the invention of new paradigms. This is the famous lesson of electricity and productivity growth, which I’ll return to in a future piece. When a technology automates some of what a human does within an existing paradigm, even the vast majority of what a human does within it, it’s quite rare for it to actually get rid of the human, because the definition of the paradigm around human-shaped roles creates all sorts of bottlenecks and frictions that demand human involvement. It’s only when we see the construction of entirely new paradigms that the full power of a technology can be realized. The ATM substituted tasks; but the iPhone made them irrelevant…

[Oks unpacks the stories of the ATM’s and iPhone’s impact on banking, then looks ahead, by anaology, to what might be in store with AI. He concludes…]

… I am not a “denier” on the question of technological job loss; Vance’s blithe optimism is not mine. But I’m skeptical that simply slotting AI into human-shaped jobs will have the results people seem to expect. The history of technology, even exceptionally powerful general-purpose technology, tells us that as long as you are trying to fit capital into labor-shaped holes you will find yourself confronted by endless frictions: just as with electricity, the productivity inherent in any technology is unleashed only when you figure out how to organize work around it, rather than slotting it into what already exists. We are still very much in the regime of slotting it in. And as long as we are in that regime, I expect disappointing productivity gains and relatively little real displacement.

The real productivity gains from AI—and the real threat of labor displacement—will come not from the “drop-in remote worker,” but from something like Dwarkesh Patel’s vision of the fully-automated firm. At some point in the life of every technology, old workflows are replaced by new ones, and we discover the paradigms in which the full productive force of a technology can best be expressed. In the past this has simply been a fact of managerial turnover or depreciation cycles. But with AI it will likely be the sheer power of the technology itself, which really is wholly unlike anything that has come before, and unlike electricity or the steam engine will eventually be able to build the structures that harness its powers by itself.

I don’t think we’ve really yet learned what those new structures will look like. But, at the limit, I don’t quite know why humans have to be involved in those: though I suspect that by the time we’re dealing with the fully-automated organizations of the future, our current set of concerns will have been largely outmoded by new and quite foreign ones, as has always been the case with human progress.

But, however optimistic I might be about the human future, I don’t think it’s worth leaning on the history of past technologies for comfort. The ATM parable is a comforting narrative; and in times of uncertainty and fear we search naturally for solace and comfort wherever it may come. But even when it comes to bank tellers, it’s only the first half of the story…

Eminently worth reading in full: “Why ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did.”

As to whether the wisdom of Amara and Oks is widely-shared, consider this from Crunchbase:

Crunchbase data shows global venture investment totaled $189 billion in February — the largest startup funding month on record — although 83% of capital raised went to just three companies. They include OpenAI, which raised $110 billion, also in the largest round ever raised by a private, venture-backed company.

The record month for venture funding took place against the backdrop of a trillion-dollar stock market drop as AI compute and tooling unsettled leading public software companies. [See also here.]

All told, venture investment was up close to 780% year over year from the $21.5 billion raised by startups in February 2025.

OpenAI was not the only company to raise tens of billions of dollars last month. Its closest rival, Anthropic, raised $30 billion, marking the third-largest venture round on record.

Waymo, Alphabet‘s self-driving division, raised $16 billion. Together, those three rounds totaled $156 billion, representing 83% of the global venture capital raised in February.

A further four companies each raised $1 billion or more last month: Tokyo-based semiconductor manufacturer Rapidus; London-based self-driving platform Wayve; San Francisco-based AI for robotics World Labs; and Sunnyvale, California-based AI semiconductor company Cerebras Systems.

These massive rounds were led by strategic corporate investors, a host of private equity and alternative investors, as well as a few multistage venture investors and a government agency…

– “Massive AI Deals Drive $189B Startup Funding Record In February While Public Software Stocks Reel“

As Carlota Perez explains in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, we’re forever blowing bubbles…

* Neil Postman

###

As we contemplate change, we might send sanitary, odor-free birthday greetings to Sir Joseph William Bazalgette; he was born on this date in 1819.  A civil engineer, he became chief engineer of London’s Metropolitan Board of Works, in which role his major achievement was a response to the “Great Stink of 1858,” in July and August of 1858, during which very hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent.  Bazalgette oversaw the creation of a sewer network for central London which addressed the problem– and was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, in beginning the cleansing of the River Thames, and in creating (a crucial part of) the infrastructure that underlay its extraordinary growth over the next century.

source

“Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. A new technology does not merely add something; it changes everything”*…

Insofar as (at the risk of sounding tautological) transformative technologies are concerned, Neil Postman is surely right. But then, as Roy Amara pointed out, “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” David Oks uses a common myth of technological replacement to illustrate– and more specifically, to observe that there’s a lot more to replacing labor than just automating tasks.

He begins by recounting an interview a few months ago of J. D. Vance by Ross Douthat in which (in response to a question from Douthat about the potential downsides of AI, in particular the prospect of its “obsoleting” human workers) Vance responded sanguinely, arguing that ATM machines didn’t eliminate bank tellers. Indeed, Vance suggested, “we have more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created, but they’re doing slightly different work…”

There are two interesting things about what Vance said, both relating to the example that he chose about bank tellers and ATMs.

The first thing is what it tells us about who J. D. Vance is. The bank teller story—how ATMs were predicted to increase bank teller unemployment, but in fact did not—isn’t a story you’ll hear from politicians; in fact, for a long time, Barack Obama would claim, incorrectly, that ATMs had decreased the number of bank tellers, in order to suggest that the elevated unemployment rate during his presidency was due to productivity gains from technology. I’ve never heard a politician cite the bank teller story before: but I have seen the bank teller story cited in a lot of blogs. I’ve seen it cited, for example, by Scott Alexander and Matt Yglesias and Freddie deBoer; and I’ve heard it, upstream of the humble bloggers, from such fine economists as Daron Acemoglu and David Autor. The story of how ATMs didn’t automate bank tellers is, indeed, something of a minor parable of the economics profession…

… But the other thing about the bank teller story that Vance cites is that it’s wrong. We do not, contrary to what Vance claims, have “more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created”: we in fact have far fewer. The story he tells Douthat might have been true in 2000 or 2005, but it hasn’t been true for years. Bank teller employment has fallen off a cliff. Here is a graph of bank teller employment since 2000:

So what happened to bank tellers? Autor, Bessen, Vance, and the like are right to point out that ATMs did not reduce bank teller employment. But they miss the second half of the story, which is that another technology did. And that technology was the iPhone. The huge decline in bank teller employment that we’ve seen over the last 15-odd years is mainly a story about iPhones and what they made possible.

But why? Why did the ATM, literally called the automated teller machine, not automate the teller, while an entirely orthogonal technology—the iPhone—actually did?

The answer, I think, is complementarity.

In my last piece, on why I don’t think imminent mass job loss from AI is likely, I talked a lot about complementarity. The core point I made was that labor substitution is about comparative advantage, not absolute advantage: the relevant question for labor impacts is not whether AI can do the tasks that humans can do, but rather whether the aggregate output of humans working with AI is inferior to what AI can produce alone. And I suggested that given the vast number of frictions and bottlenecks that exist in any human domain—domains that are, after all, defined around human labor in all its warts and eccentricities, with workflows designed around humans in mind—we should expect to see a serious gap between the incredible power of the technology and its impacts on economic life.

That gap will probably close faster than previous gaps did: AI is not “like” electricity or the steam engine; an AI system is literally a machine that can think and do things itself. But the gap exists, and will exist even as the technology continues to amaze us with what it can now accomplish.

But by talking about why ATMs didn’t displace bank tellers but iPhones did, I want to highlight an important corollary, which is that the true force of a technology is felt not with the substitution of tasks, but the invention of new paradigms. This is the famous lesson of electricity and productivity growth, which I’ll return to in a future piece. When a technology automates some of what a human does within an existing paradigm, even the vast majority of what a human does within it, it’s quite rare for it to actually get rid of the human, because the definition of the paradigm around human-shaped roles creates all sorts of bottlenecks and frictions that demand human involvement. It’s only when we see the construction of entirely new paradigms that the full power of a technology can be realized. The ATM substituted tasks; but the iPhone made them irrelevant…

[Oks unpacks the stories of the ATM’s and iPhone’s impact on banking, then looks ahead, by anaology, to what might be in store with AI. He concludes…]

… I am not a “denier” on the question of technological job loss; Vance’s blithe optimism is not mine. But I’m skeptical that simply slotting AI into human-shaped jobs will have the results people seem to expect. The history of technology, even exceptionally powerful general-purpose technology, tells us that as long as you are trying to fit capital into labor-shaped holes you will find yourself confronted by endless frictions: just as with electricity, the productivity inherent in any technology is unleashed only when you figure out how to organize work around it, rather than slotting it into what already exists. We are still very much in the regime of slotting it in. And as long as we are in that regime, I expect disappointing productivity gains and relatively little real displacement.

The real productivity gains from AI—and the real threat of labor displacement—will come not from the “drop-in remote worker,” but from something like Dwarkesh Patel’s vision of the fully-automated firm. At some point in the life of every technology, old workflows are replaced by new ones, and we discover the paradigms in which the full productive force of a technology can best be expressed. In the past this has simply been a fact of managerial turnover or depreciation cycles. But with AI it will likely be the sheer power of the technology itself, which really is wholly unlike anything that has come before, and unlike electricity or the steam engine will eventually be able to build the structures that harness its powers by itself.

I don’t think we’ve really yet learned what those new structures will look like. But, at the limit, I don’t quite know why humans have to be involved in those: though I suspect that by the time we’re dealing with the fully-automated organizations of the future, our current set of concerns will have been largely outmoded by new and quite foreign ones, as has always been the case with human progress.

But, however optimistic I might be about the human future, I don’t think it’s worth leaning on the history of past technologies for comfort. The ATM parable is a comforting narrative; and in times of uncertainty and fear we search naturally for solace and comfort wherever it may come. But even when it comes to bank tellers, it’s only the first half of the story…

Eminently worth reading in full: “Why ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did.”

As to whether the wisdom of Amara and Oks is widely-shared, consider this from Crunchbase:

Crunchbase data shows global venture investment totaled $189 billion in February — the largest startup funding month on record — although 83% of capital raised went to just three companies. They include OpenAI, which raised $110 billion, also in the largest round ever raised by a private, venture-backed company.

The record month for venture funding took place against the backdrop of a trillion-dollar stock market drop as AI compute and tooling unsettled leading public software companies. [See also here.]

All told, venture investment was up close to 780% year over year from the $21.5 billion raised by startups in February 2025.

OpenAI was not the only company to raise tens of billions of dollars last month. Its closest rival, Anthropic, raised $30 billion, marking the third-largest venture round on record.

Waymo, Alphabet‘s self-driving division, raised $16 billion. Together, those three rounds totaled $156 billion, representing 83% of the global venture capital raised in February.

A further four companies each raised $1 billion or more last month: Tokyo-based semiconductor manufacturer Rapidus; London-based self-driving platform Wayve; San Francisco-based AI for robotics World Labs; and Sunnyvale, California-based AI semiconductor company Cerebras Systems.

These massive rounds were led by strategic corporate investors, a host of private equity and alternative investors, as well as a few multistage venture investors and a government agency…

– “Massive AI Deals Drive $189B Startup Funding Record In February While Public Software Stocks Reel“

As Carlota Perez explains in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, we’re forever blowing bubbles…

* Neil Postman

###

As we contemplate change, we might send sanitary, odor-free birthday greetings to Sir Joseph William Bazalgette; he was born on this date in 1819.  A civil engineer, he became chief engineer of London’s Metropolitan Board of Works, in which role his major achievement was a response to the “Great Stink of 1858,” in July and August of 1858, during which very hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent.  Bazalgette oversaw the creation of a sewer network for central London which addressed the problem– and was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, in beginning the cleansing of the River Thames, and in creating (a crucial part of) the infrastructure that underlay its extraordinary growth over the next century.

source

“Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. A new technology does not merely add something; it changes everything”*…

Insofar as (at the risk of sounding tautological) transformative technologies are concerned, Neil Postman is surely right. But then, as Roy Amara pointed out, “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” David Oks uses a common myth of technological replacement to illustrate– and more specifically, to observe that there’s a lot more to replacing labor than just automating tasks.

He begins by recounting an interview a few months ago of J. D. Vance by Ross Douthat in which (in response to a question from Douthat about the potential downsides of AI, in particular the prospect of its “obsoleting” human workers) Vance responded sanguinely, arguing that ATM machines didn’t eliminate bank tellers. Indeed, Vance suggested, “we have more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created, but they’re doing slightly different work…”

There are two interesting things about what Vance said, both relating to the example that he chose about bank tellers and ATMs.

The first thing is what it tells us about who J. D. Vance is. The bank teller story—how ATMs were predicted to increase bank teller unemployment, but in fact did not—isn’t a story you’ll hear from politicians; in fact, for a long time, Barack Obama would claim, incorrectly, that ATMs had decreased the number of bank tellers, in order to suggest that the elevated unemployment rate during his presidency was due to productivity gains from technology. I’ve never heard a politician cite the bank teller story before: but I have seen the bank teller story cited in a lot of blogs. I’ve seen it cited, for example, by Scott Alexander and Matt Yglesias and Freddie deBoer; and I’ve heard it, upstream of the humble bloggers, from such fine economists as Daron Acemoglu and David Autor. The story of how ATMs didn’t automate bank tellers is, indeed, something of a minor parable of the economics profession…

… But the other thing about the bank teller story that Vance cites is that it’s wrong. We do not, contrary to what Vance claims, have “more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created”: we in fact have far fewer. The story he tells Douthat might have been true in 2000 or 2005, but it hasn’t been true for years. Bank teller employment has fallen off a cliff. Here is a graph of bank teller employment since 2000:

So what happened to bank tellers? Autor, Bessen, Vance, and the like are right to point out that ATMs did not reduce bank teller employment. But they miss the second half of the story, which is that another technology did. And that technology was the iPhone. The huge decline in bank teller employment that we’ve seen over the last 15-odd years is mainly a story about iPhones and what they made possible.

But why? Why did the ATM, literally called the automated teller machine, not automate the teller, while an entirely orthogonal technology—the iPhone—actually did?

The answer, I think, is complementarity.

In my last piece, on why I don’t think imminent mass job loss from AI is likely, I talked a lot about complementarity. The core point I made was that labor substitution is about comparative advantage, not absolute advantage: the relevant question for labor impacts is not whether AI can do the tasks that humans can do, but rather whether the aggregate output of humans working with AI is inferior to what AI can produce alone. And I suggested that given the vast number of frictions and bottlenecks that exist in any human domain—domains that are, after all, defined around human labor in all its warts and eccentricities, with workflows designed around humans in mind—we should expect to see a serious gap between the incredible power of the technology and its impacts on economic life.

That gap will probably close faster than previous gaps did: AI is not “like” electricity or the steam engine; an AI system is literally a machine that can think and do things itself. But the gap exists, and will exist even as the technology continues to amaze us with what it can now accomplish.

But by talking about why ATMs didn’t displace bank tellers but iPhones did, I want to highlight an important corollary, which is that the true force of a technology is felt not with the substitution of tasks, but the invention of new paradigms. This is the famous lesson of electricity and productivity growth, which I’ll return to in a future piece. When a technology automates some of what a human does within an existing paradigm, even the vast majority of what a human does within it, it’s quite rare for it to actually get rid of the human, because the definition of the paradigm around human-shaped roles creates all sorts of bottlenecks and frictions that demand human involvement. It’s only when we see the construction of entirely new paradigms that the full power of a technology can be realized. The ATM substituted tasks; but the iPhone made them irrelevant…

[Oks unpacks the stories of the ATM’s and iPhone’s impact on banking, then looks ahead, by anaology, to what might be in store with AI. He concludes…]

… I am not a “denier” on the question of technological job loss; Vance’s blithe optimism is not mine. But I’m skeptical that simply slotting AI into human-shaped jobs will have the results people seem to expect. The history of technology, even exceptionally powerful general-purpose technology, tells us that as long as you are trying to fit capital into labor-shaped holes you will find yourself confronted by endless frictions: just as with electricity, the productivity inherent in any technology is unleashed only when you figure out how to organize work around it, rather than slotting it into what already exists. We are still very much in the regime of slotting it in. And as long as we are in that regime, I expect disappointing productivity gains and relatively little real displacement.

The real productivity gains from AI—and the real threat of labor displacement—will come not from the “drop-in remote worker,” but from something like Dwarkesh Patel’s vision of the fully-automated firm. At some point in the life of every technology, old workflows are replaced by new ones, and we discover the paradigms in which the full productive force of a technology can best be expressed. In the past this has simply been a fact of managerial turnover or depreciation cycles. But with AI it will likely be the sheer power of the technology itself, which really is wholly unlike anything that has come before, and unlike electricity or the steam engine will eventually be able to build the structures that harness its powers by itself.

I don’t think we’ve really yet learned what those new structures will look like. But, at the limit, I don’t quite know why humans have to be involved in those: though I suspect that by the time we’re dealing with the fully-automated organizations of the future, our current set of concerns will have been largely outmoded by new and quite foreign ones, as has always been the case with human progress.

But, however optimistic I might be about the human future, I don’t think it’s worth leaning on the history of past technologies for comfort. The ATM parable is a comforting narrative; and in times of uncertainty and fear we search naturally for solace and comfort wherever it may come. But even when it comes to bank tellers, it’s only the first half of the story…

Eminently worth reading in full: “Why ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did.”

As to whether the wisdom of Amara and Oks is widely-shared, consider this from Crunchbase:

Crunchbase data shows global venture investment totaled $189 billion in February — the largest startup funding month on record — although 83% of capital raised went to just three companies. They include OpenAI, which raised $110 billion, also in the largest round ever raised by a private, venture-backed company.

The record month for venture funding took place against the backdrop of a trillion-dollar stock market drop as AI compute and tooling unsettled leading public software companies. [See also here.]

All told, venture investment was up close to 780% year over year from the $21.5 billion raised by startups in February 2025.

OpenAI was not the only company to raise tens of billions of dollars last month. Its closest rival, Anthropic, raised $30 billion, marking the third-largest venture round on record.

Waymo, Alphabet‘s self-driving division, raised $16 billion. Together, those three rounds totaled $156 billion, representing 83% of the global venture capital raised in February.

A further four companies each raised $1 billion or more last month: Tokyo-based semiconductor manufacturer Rapidus; London-based self-driving platform Wayve; San Francisco-based AI for robotics World Labs; and Sunnyvale, California-based AI semiconductor company Cerebras Systems.

These massive rounds were led by strategic corporate investors, a host of private equity and alternative investors, as well as a few multistage venture investors and a government agency…

– “Massive AI Deals Drive $189B Startup Funding Record In February While Public Software Stocks Reel“

As Carlota Perez explains in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, we’re forever blowing bubbles…

* Neil Postman

###

As we contemplate change, we might send sanitary, odor-free birthday greetings to Sir Joseph William Bazalgette; he was born on this date in 1819.  A civil engineer, he became chief engineer of London’s Metropolitan Board of Works, in which role his major achievement was a response to the “Great Stink of 1858,” in July and August of 1858, during which very hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent.  Bazalgette oversaw the creation of a sewer network for central London which addressed the problem– and was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, in beginning the cleansing of the River Thames, and in creating (a crucial part of) the infrastructure that underlay its extraordinary growth over the next century.

source

“Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. A new technology does not merely add something; it changes everything”*…

Insofar as (at the risk of sounding tautological) transformative technologies are concerned, Neil Postman is surely right. But then, as Roy Amara pointed out, “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” David Oks uses a common myth of technological replacement to illustrate– and more specifically, to observe that there’s a lot more to replacing labor than just automating tasks.

He begins by recounting an interview a few months ago of J. D. Vance by Ross Douthat in which (in response to a question from Douthat about the potential downsides of AI, in particular the prospect of its “obsoleting” human workers) Vance responded sanguinely, arguing that ATM machines didn’t eliminate bank tellers. Indeed, Vance suggested, “we have more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created, but they’re doing slightly different work…”

There are two interesting things about what Vance said, both relating to the example that he chose about bank tellers and ATMs.

The first thing is what it tells us about who J. D. Vance is. The bank teller story—how ATMs were predicted to increase bank teller unemployment, but in fact did not—isn’t a story you’ll hear from politicians; in fact, for a long time, Barack Obama would claim, incorrectly, that ATMs had decreased the number of bank tellers, in order to suggest that the elevated unemployment rate during his presidency was due to productivity gains from technology. I’ve never heard a politician cite the bank teller story before: but I have seen the bank teller story cited in a lot of blogs. I’ve seen it cited, for example, by Scott Alexander and Matt Yglesias and Freddie deBoer; and I’ve heard it, upstream of the humble bloggers, from such fine economists as Daron Acemoglu and David Autor. The story of how ATMs didn’t automate bank tellers is, indeed, something of a minor parable of the economics profession…

… But the other thing about the bank teller story that Vance cites is that it’s wrong. We do not, contrary to what Vance claims, have “more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created”: we in fact have far fewer. The story he tells Douthat might have been true in 2000 or 2005, but it hasn’t been true for years. Bank teller employment has fallen off a cliff. Here is a graph of bank teller employment since 2000:

So what happened to bank tellers? Autor, Bessen, Vance, and the like are right to point out that ATMs did not reduce bank teller employment. But they miss the second half of the story, which is that another technology did. And that technology was the iPhone. The huge decline in bank teller employment that we’ve seen over the last 15-odd years is mainly a story about iPhones and what they made possible.

But why? Why did the ATM, literally called the automated teller machine, not automate the teller, while an entirely orthogonal technology—the iPhone—actually did?

The answer, I think, is complementarity.

In my last piece, on why I don’t think imminent mass job loss from AI is likely, I talked a lot about complementarity. The core point I made was that labor substitution is about comparative advantage, not absolute advantage: the relevant question for labor impacts is not whether AI can do the tasks that humans can do, but rather whether the aggregate output of humans working with AI is inferior to what AI can produce alone. And I suggested that given the vast number of frictions and bottlenecks that exist in any human domain—domains that are, after all, defined around human labor in all its warts and eccentricities, with workflows designed around humans in mind—we should expect to see a serious gap between the incredible power of the technology and its impacts on economic life.

That gap will probably close faster than previous gaps did: AI is not “like” electricity or the steam engine; an AI system is literally a machine that can think and do things itself. But the gap exists, and will exist even as the technology continues to amaze us with what it can now accomplish.

But by talking about why ATMs didn’t displace bank tellers but iPhones did, I want to highlight an important corollary, which is that the true force of a technology is felt not with the substitution of tasks, but the invention of new paradigms. This is the famous lesson of electricity and productivity growth, which I’ll return to in a future piece. When a technology automates some of what a human does within an existing paradigm, even the vast majority of what a human does within it, it’s quite rare for it to actually get rid of the human, because the definition of the paradigm around human-shaped roles creates all sorts of bottlenecks and frictions that demand human involvement. It’s only when we see the construction of entirely new paradigms that the full power of a technology can be realized. The ATM substituted tasks; but the iPhone made them irrelevant…

[Oks unpacks the stories of the ATM’s and iPhone’s impact on banking, then looks ahead, by anaology, to what might be in store with AI. He concludes…]

… I am not a “denier” on the question of technological job loss; Vance’s blithe optimism is not mine. But I’m skeptical that simply slotting AI into human-shaped jobs will have the results people seem to expect. The history of technology, even exceptionally powerful general-purpose technology, tells us that as long as you are trying to fit capital into labor-shaped holes you will find yourself confronted by endless frictions: just as with electricity, the productivity inherent in any technology is unleashed only when you figure out how to organize work around it, rather than slotting it into what already exists. We are still very much in the regime of slotting it in. And as long as we are in that regime, I expect disappointing productivity gains and relatively little real displacement.

The real productivity gains from AI—and the real threat of labor displacement—will come not from the “drop-in remote worker,” but from something like Dwarkesh Patel’s vision of the fully-automated firm. At some point in the life of every technology, old workflows are replaced by new ones, and we discover the paradigms in which the full productive force of a technology can best be expressed. In the past this has simply been a fact of managerial turnover or depreciation cycles. But with AI it will likely be the sheer power of the technology itself, which really is wholly unlike anything that has come before, and unlike electricity or the steam engine will eventually be able to build the structures that harness its powers by itself.

I don’t think we’ve really yet learned what those new structures will look like. But, at the limit, I don’t quite know why humans have to be involved in those: though I suspect that by the time we’re dealing with the fully-automated organizations of the future, our current set of concerns will have been largely outmoded by new and quite foreign ones, as has always been the case with human progress.

But, however optimistic I might be about the human future, I don’t think it’s worth leaning on the history of past technologies for comfort. The ATM parable is a comforting narrative; and in times of uncertainty and fear we search naturally for solace and comfort wherever it may come. But even when it comes to bank tellers, it’s only the first half of the story…

Eminently worth reading in full: “Why ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did.”

As to whether the wisdom of Amara and Oks is widely-shared, consider this from Crunchbase:

Crunchbase data shows global venture investment totaled $189 billion in February — the largest startup funding month on record — although 83% of capital raised went to just three companies. They include OpenAI, which raised $110 billion, also in the largest round ever raised by a private, venture-backed company.

The record month for venture funding took place against the backdrop of a trillion-dollar stock market drop as AI compute and tooling unsettled leading public software companies. [See also here.]

All told, venture investment was up close to 780% year over year from the $21.5 billion raised by startups in February 2025.

OpenAI was not the only company to raise tens of billions of dollars last month. Its closest rival, Anthropic, raised $30 billion, marking the third-largest venture round on record.

Waymo, Alphabet‘s self-driving division, raised $16 billion. Together, those three rounds totaled $156 billion, representing 83% of the global venture capital raised in February.

A further four companies each raised $1 billion or more last month: Tokyo-based semiconductor manufacturer Rapidus; London-based self-driving platform Wayve; San Francisco-based AI for robotics World Labs; and Sunnyvale, California-based AI semiconductor company Cerebras Systems.

These massive rounds were led by strategic corporate investors, a host of private equity and alternative investors, as well as a few multistage venture investors and a government agency…

– “Massive AI Deals Drive $189B Startup Funding Record In February While Public Software Stocks Reel“

As Carlota Perez explains in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, we’re forever blowing bubbles…

* Neil Postman

###

As we contemplate change, we might send sanitary, odor-free birthday greetings to Sir Joseph William Bazalgette; he was born on this date in 1819.  A civil engineer, he became chief engineer of London’s Metropolitan Board of Works, in which role his major achievement was a response to the “Great Stink of 1858,” in July and August of 1858, during which very hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent.  Bazalgette oversaw the creation of a sewer network for central London which addressed the problem– and was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, in beginning the cleansing of the River Thames, and in creating (a crucial part of) the infrastructure that underlay its extraordinary growth over the next century.

source

“Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. A new technology does not merely add something; it changes everything”*…

Insofar as (at the risk of sounding tautological) transformative technologies are concerned, Neil Postman is surely right. But then, as Roy Amara pointed out, “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” David Oks uses a common myth of technological replacement to illustrate– and more specifically, to observe that there’s a lot more to replacing labor than just automating tasks.

He begins by recounting an interview a few months ago of J. D. Vance by Ross Douthat in which (in response to a question from Douthat about the potential downsides of AI, in particular the prospect of its “obsoleting” human workers) Vance responded sanguinely, arguing that ATM machines didn’t eliminate bank tellers. Indeed, Vance suggested, “we have more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created, but they’re doing slightly different work…”

There are two interesting things about what Vance said, both relating to the example that he chose about bank tellers and ATMs.

The first thing is what it tells us about who J. D. Vance is. The bank teller story—how ATMs were predicted to increase bank teller unemployment, but in fact did not—isn’t a story you’ll hear from politicians; in fact, for a long time, Barack Obama would claim, incorrectly, that ATMs had decreased the number of bank tellers, in order to suggest that the elevated unemployment rate during his presidency was due to productivity gains from technology. I’ve never heard a politician cite the bank teller story before: but I have seen the bank teller story cited in a lot of blogs. I’ve seen it cited, for example, by Scott Alexander and Matt Yglesias and Freddie deBoer; and I’ve heard it, upstream of the humble bloggers, from such fine economists as Daron Acemoglu and David Autor. The story of how ATMs didn’t automate bank tellers is, indeed, something of a minor parable of the economics profession…

… But the other thing about the bank teller story that Vance cites is that it’s wrong. We do not, contrary to what Vance claims, have “more bank tellers today than we did when the ATM was created”: we in fact have far fewer. The story he tells Douthat might have been true in 2000 or 2005, but it hasn’t been true for years. Bank teller employment has fallen off a cliff. Here is a graph of bank teller employment since 2000:

So what happened to bank tellers? Autor, Bessen, Vance, and the like are right to point out that ATMs did not reduce bank teller employment. But they miss the second half of the story, which is that another technology did. And that technology was the iPhone. The huge decline in bank teller employment that we’ve seen over the last 15-odd years is mainly a story about iPhones and what they made possible.

But why? Why did the ATM, literally called the automated teller machine, not automate the teller, while an entirely orthogonal technology—the iPhone—actually did?

The answer, I think, is complementarity.

In my last piece, on why I don’t think imminent mass job loss from AI is likely, I talked a lot about complementarity. The core point I made was that labor substitution is about comparative advantage, not absolute advantage: the relevant question for labor impacts is not whether AI can do the tasks that humans can do, but rather whether the aggregate output of humans working with AI is inferior to what AI can produce alone. And I suggested that given the vast number of frictions and bottlenecks that exist in any human domain—domains that are, after all, defined around human labor in all its warts and eccentricities, with workflows designed around humans in mind—we should expect to see a serious gap between the incredible power of the technology and its impacts on economic life.

That gap will probably close faster than previous gaps did: AI is not “like” electricity or the steam engine; an AI system is literally a machine that can think and do things itself. But the gap exists, and will exist even as the technology continues to amaze us with what it can now accomplish.

But by talking about why ATMs didn’t displace bank tellers but iPhones did, I want to highlight an important corollary, which is that the true force of a technology is felt not with the substitution of tasks, but the invention of new paradigms. This is the famous lesson of electricity and productivity growth, which I’ll return to in a future piece. When a technology automates some of what a human does within an existing paradigm, even the vast majority of what a human does within it, it’s quite rare for it to actually get rid of the human, because the definition of the paradigm around human-shaped roles creates all sorts of bottlenecks and frictions that demand human involvement. It’s only when we see the construction of entirely new paradigms that the full power of a technology can be realized. The ATM substituted tasks; but the iPhone made them irrelevant…

[Oks unpacks the stories of the ATM’s and iPhone’s impact on banking, then looks ahead, by anaology, to what might be in store with AI. He concludes…]

… I am not a “denier” on the question of technological job loss; Vance’s blithe optimism is not mine. But I’m skeptical that simply slotting AI into human-shaped jobs will have the results people seem to expect. The history of technology, even exceptionally powerful general-purpose technology, tells us that as long as you are trying to fit capital into labor-shaped holes you will find yourself confronted by endless frictions: just as with electricity, the productivity inherent in any technology is unleashed only when you figure out how to organize work around it, rather than slotting it into what already exists. We are still very much in the regime of slotting it in. And as long as we are in that regime, I expect disappointing productivity gains and relatively little real displacement.

The real productivity gains from AI—and the real threat of labor displacement—will come not from the “drop-in remote worker,” but from something like Dwarkesh Patel’s vision of the fully-automated firm. At some point in the life of every technology, old workflows are replaced by new ones, and we discover the paradigms in which the full productive force of a technology can best be expressed. In the past this has simply been a fact of managerial turnover or depreciation cycles. But with AI it will likely be the sheer power of the technology itself, which really is wholly unlike anything that has come before, and unlike electricity or the steam engine will eventually be able to build the structures that harness its powers by itself.

I don’t think we’ve really yet learned what those new structures will look like. But, at the limit, I don’t quite know why humans have to be involved in those: though I suspect that by the time we’re dealing with the fully-automated organizations of the future, our current set of concerns will have been largely outmoded by new and quite foreign ones, as has always been the case with human progress.

But, however optimistic I might be about the human future, I don’t think it’s worth leaning on the history of past technologies for comfort. The ATM parable is a comforting narrative; and in times of uncertainty and fear we search naturally for solace and comfort wherever it may come. But even when it comes to bank tellers, it’s only the first half of the story…

Eminently worth reading in full: “Why ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did.”

As to whether the wisdom of Amara and Oks is widely-shared, consider this from Crunchbase:

Crunchbase data shows global venture investment totaled $189 billion in February — the largest startup funding month on record — although 83% of capital raised went to just three companies. They include OpenAI, which raised $110 billion, also in the largest round ever raised by a private, venture-backed company.

The record month for venture funding took place against the backdrop of a trillion-dollar stock market drop as AI compute and tooling unsettled leading public software companies. [See also here.]

All told, venture investment was up close to 780% year over year from the $21.5 billion raised by startups in February 2025.

OpenAI was not the only company to raise tens of billions of dollars last month. Its closest rival, Anthropic, raised $30 billion, marking the third-largest venture round on record.

Waymo, Alphabet‘s self-driving division, raised $16 billion. Together, those three rounds totaled $156 billion, representing 83% of the global venture capital raised in February.

A further four companies each raised $1 billion or more last month: Tokyo-based semiconductor manufacturer Rapidus; London-based self-driving platform Wayve; San Francisco-based AI for robotics World Labs; and Sunnyvale, California-based AI semiconductor company Cerebras Systems.

These massive rounds were led by strategic corporate investors, a host of private equity and alternative investors, as well as a few multistage venture investors and a government agency…

– “Massive AI Deals Drive $189B Startup Funding Record In February While Public Software Stocks Reel“

As Carlota Perez explains in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, we’re forever blowing bubbles…

* Neil Postman

###

As we contemplate change, we might send sanitary, odor-free birthday greetings to Sir Joseph William Bazalgette; he was born on this date in 1819.  A civil engineer, he became chief engineer of London’s Metropolitan Board of Works, in which role his major achievement was a response to the “Great Stink of 1858,” in July and August of 1858, during which very hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent.  Bazalgette oversaw the creation of a sewer network for central London which addressed the problem– and was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, in beginning the cleansing of the River Thames, and in creating (a crucial part of) the infrastructure that underlay its extraordinary growth over the next century.

source

📰 Circular management of human excreta as a pillar of sustainable cities and food systems

https://hal.science/hal-05478504

This is the written summary of a presentation I gave at the annual meeting of the International Fertiliser Society (you can watch the presentation here: https://video.ploud.fr/w/qb3a8rXPxW7QQmWN7uBBKS)

I discuss the limitations of sewer-based sanitation in the face of climate change and increasing water scarcity: can we still afford the amount of water that is needed for sewers to effectively carry fecal matter all the way to the treatment plant?
Obviously I also mention how alternative management methods are being tested throughout Europe, including in large neighborhoods in Hamburg, Sneek, or Helsingborg (and soon Paris).

#circularity #circularEconomy #environment #sanitation #fertiliser #toilets #sustainability #sustainableCities #WWTP #sewers

hi again #FediFriends 👋

does anyone know of any #tailors / #sewers or online services in #Canberra (or elsewhere in Aus) that can re-do a #tshirt #neckline & insert a proper elasticsted neckband?

I have a bunch™ of #tshirts that claim to be unisex but have terrible, tight neck holes (that’s a word, right? 🤪) that I rarely wear but absolutely would if I can get them fixed – I don’t have the necessary skills or equipment & tbh don’t really wish to invest the time but will happily exchange money for goods & services…

pls #boost4reach thx

#Inktober Day 4 : #Murky

Murky makes me think of #sewers and sewers make me think of the spiteful river spirit Peg Powler.

This drawing is modelled on the drawing of Peg Powler from the book Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee (1978), but transposed into a #Victorian #sewer.

#Inktober2025

Flood Hydrology Roadmap [UK]
--
https://www.gov.uk/flood-and-coastal-erosion-risk-management-research-reports/flood-hydrology-roadmap <-- shared technical details
--
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62335ac2e90e070a54e18185/FRS18196_Flood_hydrology_roadmap_-_report.pdf <-- shared roadmap as a PDF
--
https://doi.org/10.2166/nh.2022.053 <-- shared paper
--
#water #hydrology #flood flooding risk hazard roadmap UK Britain cost #economics #publicsafety #publichealth #extremeweather #government #program #policy #mitigation #fluvial #floodhydrology #actionplan #England #Wales #Scotland #NorthernIreland #engineering #fluvial #pluvial #sewers #groundwater #reservoir #research #logistics #methods #operations #data #spatial #GIS #mapping #management #partnership #collaboration #regulations #interagency #riskmanagement #riskanalysis #practice #design #systems #landuse #change #climatechange

Making London less shitty, Victorian style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SicMBOUw9Zc

#London #sewage #Victorian #SteamEngines #sewers #cholera

High levels of #ToxicChemicals found in #BrunswickMaine airport hangar #sewers

#CitizenPFAS monitoring revealed concerning levels of toxic chemicals in the sewer outfall of #Hangar6 in Brunswick, though a company hired to assess risk at the hangar said there is no leak of the toxic firefighting foams on the premises.

by Kristian Moravec, The Times Record
Posted February 4, 2025, Updated February 5

"A citizens group’s testing revealed that sewer water flowing from Hangar 6 at Brunswick’s airport has high levels of harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS.

"#FriendsOfMerrymeetingBay conducted testing on Nov. 26. The tests detected high levels of a particularly toxic #PFAS chemical compound known as #PFOS. The update comes the same day the owner of the hangar, the #MidcoastRegionalRedevelopmentAuthority, sent a letter to the town stating that tanks that stored the chemicals were not leaking.

"PFOS is a compound known to be harmful to human health and is found in high levels in aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF). Brunswick Executive Airport’s Hangar 4, which is owned by the Navy but operated by MRRA, dumped 1,450 gallons of AFFF concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water on Aug. 19, 2024.

"The spill prompted ongoing cleanup and monitoring efforts as well as a push to get rid of the foam at the airport. Concern has grown around Hangar 6, which some have speculated is leaking harmful chemicals based on the testing data around the airport that Friends of Merrymeeting Bay has collected over the years. The sewage that flows out of Hangar 6, which is not treated for PFAS, ultimately flows into the #AndroscogginRiver."

Original article:
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/02/04/high-levels-of-toxic-chemicals-found-in-brunswick-airport-hangar-sewers/

Archived version:
https://archive.md/LlHx1

#CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #CascoBay #PFASContamination #BrunswickMaine #EnvironmentalDamage #ManMadeDisasters #WaterIsLife #PFAS #AndroscogginRiver #PFASContamination #AFFF #PFOS #PicnicPond #Site8Stream #MereBrook #MerriconeagStream #CascoBay #HarpswellCove #Wildlife #OceansAreLife #PFASPollution #BrunswickNavalAirStation #BrunswickStation #Maine #FirefightingFoam #OceansAreLife

High levels of #ToxicChemicals found in #BrunswickMaine airport hangar #sewers

#CitizenPFAS monitoring revealed concerning levels of toxic chemicals in the sewer outfall of #Hangar6 in Brunswick, though a company hired to assess risk at the hangar said there is no leak of the toxic firefighting foams on the premises.

by Kristian Moravec, The Times Record
Posted February 4, 2025, Updated February 5

"A citizens group’s testing revealed that sewer water flowing from Hangar 6 at Brunswick’s airport has high levels of harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS.

"#FriendsOfMerrymeetingBay conducted testing on Nov. 26. The tests detected high levels of a particularly toxic #PFAS chemical compound known as #PFOS. The update comes the same day the owner of the hangar, the #MidcoastRegionalRedevelopmentAuthority, sent a letter to the town stating that tanks that stored the chemicals were not leaking.

"PFOS is a compound known to be harmful to human health and is found in high levels in aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF). Brunswick Executive Airport’s Hangar 4, which is owned by the Navy but operated by MRRA, dumped 1,450 gallons of AFFF concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water on Aug. 19, 2024.

"The spill prompted ongoing cleanup and monitoring efforts as well as a push to get rid of the foam at the airport. Concern has grown around Hangar 6, which some have speculated is leaking harmful chemicals based on the testing data around the airport that Friends of Merrymeeting Bay has collected over the years. The sewage that flows out of Hangar 6, which is not treated for PFAS, ultimately flows into the #AndroscogginRiver."

Original article:
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/02/04/high-levels-of-toxic-chemicals-found-in-brunswick-airport-hangar-sewers/

Archived version:
https://archive.md/LlHx1

#CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #CascoBay #PFASContamination #BrunswickMaine #EnvironmentalDamage #ManMadeDisasters #WaterIsLife #PFAS #AndroscogginRiver #PFASContamination #AFFF #PFOS #PicnicPond #Site8Stream #MereBrook #MerriconeagStream #CascoBay #HarpswellCove #Wildlife #OceansAreLife #PFASPollution #BrunswickNavalAirStation #BrunswickStation #Maine #FirefightingFoam #OceansAreLife

High levels of #ToxicChemicals found in #BrunswickMaine airport hangar #sewers

#CitizenPFAS monitoring revealed concerning levels of toxic chemicals in the sewer outfall of #Hangar6 in Brunswick, though a company hired to assess risk at the hangar said there is no leak of the toxic firefighting foams on the premises.

by Kristian Moravec, The Times Record
Posted February 4, 2025, Updated February 5

"A citizens group’s testing revealed that sewer water flowing from Hangar 6 at Brunswick’s airport has high levels of harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS.

"#FriendsOfMerrymeetingBay conducted testing on Nov. 26. The tests detected high levels of a particularly toxic #PFAS chemical compound known as #PFOS. The update comes the same day the owner of the hangar, the #MidcoastRegionalRedevelopmentAuthority, sent a letter to the town stating that tanks that stored the chemicals were not leaking.

"PFOS is a compound known to be harmful to human health and is found in high levels in aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF). Brunswick Executive Airport’s Hangar 4, which is owned by the Navy but operated by MRRA, dumped 1,450 gallons of AFFF concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water on Aug. 19, 2024.

"The spill prompted ongoing cleanup and monitoring efforts as well as a push to get rid of the foam at the airport. Concern has grown around Hangar 6, which some have speculated is leaking harmful chemicals based on the testing data around the airport that Friends of Merrymeeting Bay has collected over the years. The sewage that flows out of Hangar 6, which is not treated for PFAS, ultimately flows into the #AndroscogginRiver."

Original article:
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/02/04/high-levels-of-toxic-chemicals-found-in-brunswick-airport-hangar-sewers/

Archived version:
https://archive.md/LlHx1

#CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #CascoBay #PFASContamination #BrunswickMaine #EnvironmentalDamage #ManMadeDisasters #WaterIsLife #PFAS #AndroscogginRiver #PFASContamination #AFFF #PFOS #PicnicPond #Site8Stream #MereBrook #MerriconeagStream #CascoBay #HarpswellCove #Wildlife #OceansAreLife #PFASPollution #BrunswickNavalAirStation #BrunswickStation #Maine #FirefightingFoam #OceansAreLife

High levels of #ToxicChemicals found in #BrunswickMaine airport hangar #sewers

#CitizenPFAS monitoring revealed concerning levels of toxic chemicals in the sewer outfall of #Hangar6 in Brunswick, though a company hired to assess risk at the hangar said there is no leak of the toxic firefighting foams on the premises.

by Kristian Moravec, The Times Record
Posted February 4, 2025, Updated February 5

"A citizens group’s testing revealed that sewer water flowing from Hangar 6 at Brunswick’s airport has high levels of harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS.

"#FriendsOfMerrymeetingBay conducted testing on Nov. 26. The tests detected high levels of a particularly toxic #PFAS chemical compound known as #PFOS. The update comes the same day the owner of the hangar, the #MidcoastRegionalRedevelopmentAuthority, sent a letter to the town stating that tanks that stored the chemicals were not leaking.

"PFOS is a compound known to be harmful to human health and is found in high levels in aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF). Brunswick Executive Airport’s Hangar 4, which is owned by the Navy but operated by MRRA, dumped 1,450 gallons of AFFF concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water on Aug. 19, 2024.

"The spill prompted ongoing cleanup and monitoring efforts as well as a push to get rid of the foam at the airport. Concern has grown around Hangar 6, which some have speculated is leaking harmful chemicals based on the testing data around the airport that Friends of Merrymeeting Bay has collected over the years. The sewage that flows out of Hangar 6, which is not treated for PFAS, ultimately flows into the #AndroscogginRiver."

Original article:
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/02/04/high-levels-of-toxic-chemicals-found-in-brunswick-airport-hangar-sewers/

Archived version:
https://archive.md/LlHx1

#CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #CascoBay #PFASContamination #BrunswickMaine #EnvironmentalDamage #ManMadeDisasters #WaterIsLife #PFAS #AndroscogginRiver #PFASContamination #AFFF #PFOS #PicnicPond #Site8Stream #MereBrook #MerriconeagStream #CascoBay #HarpswellCove #Wildlife #OceansAreLife #PFASPollution #BrunswickNavalAirStation #BrunswickStation #Maine #FirefightingFoam #OceansAreLife

High levels of #ToxicChemicals found in #BrunswickMaine airport hangar #sewers

#CitizenPFAS monitoring revealed concerning levels of toxic chemicals in the sewer outfall of #Hangar6 in Brunswick, though a company hired to assess risk at the hangar said there is no leak of the toxic firefighting foams on the premises.

by Kristian Moravec, The Times Record
Posted February 4, 2025, Updated February 5

"A citizens group’s testing revealed that sewer water flowing from Hangar 6 at Brunswick’s airport has high levels of harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS.

"#FriendsOfMerrymeetingBay conducted testing on Nov. 26. The tests detected high levels of a particularly toxic #PFAS chemical compound known as #PFOS. The update comes the same day the owner of the hangar, the #MidcoastRegionalRedevelopmentAuthority, sent a letter to the town stating that tanks that stored the chemicals were not leaking.

"PFOS is a compound known to be harmful to human health and is found in high levels in aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF). Brunswick Executive Airport’s Hangar 4, which is owned by the Navy but operated by MRRA, dumped 1,450 gallons of AFFF concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water on Aug. 19, 2024.

"The spill prompted ongoing cleanup and monitoring efforts as well as a push to get rid of the foam at the airport. Concern has grown around Hangar 6, which some have speculated is leaking harmful chemicals based on the testing data around the airport that Friends of Merrymeeting Bay has collected over the years. The sewage that flows out of Hangar 6, which is not treated for PFAS, ultimately flows into the #AndroscogginRiver."

Original article:
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/02/04/high-levels-of-toxic-chemicals-found-in-brunswick-airport-hangar-sewers/

Archived version:
https://archive.md/LlHx1

#CitizenScience #WaterIsLife #CascoBay #PFASContamination #BrunswickMaine #EnvironmentalDamage #ManMadeDisasters #WaterIsLife #PFAS #AndroscogginRiver #PFASContamination #AFFF #PFOS #PicnicPond #Site8Stream #MereBrook #MerriconeagStream #CascoBay #HarpswellCove #Wildlife #OceansAreLife #PFASPollution #BrunswickNavalAirStation #BrunswickStation #Maine #FirefightingFoam #OceansAreLife

Has anyone ever used #Valentina for pattern drafting? #Sewers of mastodon
Let me know?
https://smart-pattern.com.ua/en/valentina/download/

#sewing #technology #program #askmastodon

Gas mantles get very hot.

There are still British Gas employees whose job it is to light Londons remaining 200-odd working gas lamps. Imagine your job title is literally serial gaslighter.

(This gas lamp in Carting Lane, London was placed over a sewer in Victorian times to encourage stagnant gas to rise and escape through the vent.
It’s the only one left which is still working.) #gaslight #gaslamp #london #sewers #history #britishgas

#Sewists ! #Sewers (?)

TLDR:
Please give me search terms - fabric shopping online - for thinnest, lightest weight, but still has some stretch fabric. Thank you

Am #Doll crafting - specifically #sewing clothes for 11inch fashion retail dolls. barbie, rainbow High, Monster High etc

for 1/6 scale, i need lightest poss weight, with some stretch #fabrics

I shop online - I know not ideal - what terms should I look for to find the thinnest, lightest weight , but still has some stretch fabrics?

#Sewists ! #Sewers (?)

TLDR:
Please give me search terms - fabric shopping online - for thinnest, lightest weight, but still has some stretch fabric. Thank you

Am #Doll crafting - specifically #sewing clothes for 11inch fashion retail dolls. barbie, rainbow High, Monster High etc

for 1/6 scale, i need lightest poss weight, with some stretch #fabrics

I shop online - I know not ideal - what terms should I look for to find the thinnest, lightest weight , but still has some stretch fabrics?

#Sewists ! #Sewers (?)

TLDR:
Please give me search terms - fabric shopping online - for thinnest, lightest weight, but still has some stretch fabric. Thank you

Am #Doll crafting - specifically #sewing clothes for 11inch fashion retail dolls. barbie, rainbow High, Monster High etc

for 1/6 scale, i need lightest poss weight, with some stretch #fabrics

I shop online - I know not ideal - what terms should I look for to find the thinnest, lightest weight , but still has some stretch fabrics?

#Sewists ! #Sewers (?)

TLDR:
Please give me search terms - fabric shopping online - for thinnest, lightest weight, but still has some stretch fabric. Thank you

Am #Doll crafting - specifically #sewing clothes for 11inch fashion retail dolls. barbie, rainbow High, Monster High etc

for 1/6 scale, i need lightest poss weight, with some stretch #fabrics

I shop online - I know not ideal - what terms should I look for to find the thinnest, lightest weight , but still has some stretch fabrics?

#Sewists ! #Sewers (?)

TLDR:
Please give me search terms - fabric shopping online - for thinnest, lightest weight, but still has some stretch fabric. Thank you

Am #Doll crafting - specifically #sewing clothes for 11inch fashion retail dolls. barbie, rainbow High, Monster High etc

for 1/6 scale, i need lightest poss weight, with some stretch #fabrics

I shop online - I know not ideal - what terms should I look for to find the thinnest, lightest weight , but still has some stretch fabrics?

Congratulations to our American colleagues who managed to move forward with testing urine diversion rather than building new #sewers in #Falmouth !

https://www.capenews.net/falmouth/news/state-recommends-fast-tracking-urine-diverting-toilets-for-provisional-use/article_dc492298-c8a7-51f7-bec1-fbf37146d120.html

This was made possible by many dedicated individuals, as well as the Rich Earth Institute and the MASSTC.

https://richearthinstitute.org
https://www.masstc.org/project/critical-questions/falmouth-ecotoilet-project

#urine #urineDiversion #toilets #ecology #nitrogen #phosphorus #circularity #pee #peeCycling

The thread about Edinburgh’s 1970s Interceptor Sewers – the great untold engineering feat that cleaned up the Firth of Forth

This thread was originally written and published in October 2021. It has been edited and corrected for this post.

• Part 1 of Edinburgh’s sewage history was the Thread About the East Foul Burn and the Irrigated Meadows.
• Part 2 of Edinburgh’s sewage history was the Thread About the Sewage Problems of Victorian Edinburgh and How to Fix Them.
• Part 3 of Edinburgh’s sewage history was the The thread about the Interceptor Sewers; how Victorian Edinburgh cleaned up the Water of Leith. Twice.

This is part 4 – the final instalment – of my threads on Edinburgh’s sewer story – the great untold engineering feat of the 1970s Interceptor Scheme. We left off part 3 at the end of the 19th century, when Edinburgh and Leith had finally managed to clean up the polluted Water of Leith by the construction of two “interceptor” sewers to prevent waste getting into it. However none of the sewage that was diverted by these sewers and prevented from entering the river was simply piped below the low tide level and discharged, raw, into the Firth of Forth where it was hoped for that the tide and currents would move it offshore and out into the estuary. As the city grew in the 20th century, this same basic system was expanded to cope; new sewers were added to keep other rivers and streams such as the Almond, the Jordan / Pow Burn, the Figgate Burn, the Braid Burn etc. clear, but these all just diverted the effluent out into the Forth. hoped for the best that the tides and currents would carry it out to sea

In 1951, the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) (Scotland) Act made provision for the establishment of river purification boards to begin to tackle the issue of discharge of raw waste into tidal waters. This saw the Lothians River Purification Board created. This had the power to make the Forth subject to a “Tidal Waters Order” and in 1960 such an order was made. A follow on act gave the Board the power to make the Edinburgh Corporation, as it was, take action through the licensing of discharges and making that subject to conditions.

The clock was ticking now for the Corporation to take action. Initial planning of what should be done started in 1966 and was agreed with the Purification Board in 1967, to be completed by 1976. The fundamental challenge was Edinburgh’s hilly topography that divided the city up into different water catchments – and had caused the sewage network to develop piecemeal following the natural drainage. As such the system was in no way integrated and had 9 separate discharges into the Forth, none of which were treated.

Most of the existing older sewers were “interceptor” sewers, the new system had to “intercept the interceptors”. It then had to consolidate all this waste somewhere for treatment; the natural “centre of gravity” of the city’s drainage is in Leith Docks. It had to run East-West along negligible gradients and yet still be gravity worked, to avoid the expense of pumping. It then had to treat all of the waste and discharge the treated primary effluent somewhere beyond the gently shelving seabed, where the weak tidal flow made natural dispersion tricky. And lastly it had to do something about the sewage sludge leftover from primary treatment. So there was a huge amount to do.

At the centre of the scheme would be a new primary treatment works near Leith Docks at Seafield and requiring land reclamation. This would dispose of the treated effluent through a single 2.8km long outfall that reached far out underneath the Forth and it would capture the primary sludge to be disposed far off in the other reaches of the Forth by means of a disposal tanker. The works would be fed with the sewage of the city by two vast new interceptor sewers, one each approaching the works from the east and the west, tapping off all of the existing raw discharge outlets into the Forth.

Things moved remarkably quickly. The council approved the scheme in 1970 and got approval from the Scottish Development Department for the necessary financial loans, some of which came from the European Investment Bank. The project was valued at over £35m (£181m in 2023) and was “a massive civil engineering undertaking involving more than 30 main contracts.” Shovels began to enter the ground in 1971 for exploratory works associated with the land reclamation at Seafield and the first construction contract followed within months. The new interceptors were to be 15.3km long in total and of a large diameter, getting wider as they went. The western sewer started at 1.4m diameter and grew to 3.1m. The eastern sewer started at 0.7m and grew to 2.3m. They intercepted the old network at 26 separate points. It was not possible to work entirely under gravity and 6 pumping stations were required to lift the waste uphill via rising mains from parts of the coast that would not naturally drain themselves.

A huge engineering challenge was the sheer range of geological conditions to be dug through; coals, sandstones, mudstones, clays, shales, geological folding, jointing, the Pentland Fault and all sorts of impressively named features like the “Midlothian Syncline“. Most of the route ran under built up areas and therefore 73%, or 11.6km, of the route would have to be tunnelled. The geology required the use of explosives, limited by the presence of the buildings overhead. Much of the excavation was done by compressed air at high pressure, this pressure helped hold back the ground water given how shallow the tunnelling was through fairly wet ground. In some places the ground had to be artificially drained in advance and in others, where there was no other option due to the ground being saturated fine silt and sand, liquid nitrogen was injected into the ground to freeze it, making it stable enough to dig through. As if these weren’t challenges enough, the western sewer also had to cross the Water of Leith at some point. The location was in St. Mark’s Park, which required an inverted syphon on the river bed. This was constructed by building a cofferdam, diverting the river around it, and draining the river within.

The new treatment works was reclaimed out of the East Sands of Leith – home of the Pennybap Stane and the bogle Shellycoat – by extending the existing sea wall of the dock railway yards and then filling in behind it; there was still no shortage of demolition rubble from clearances in the city in the early 1970s, plus an almost endless supply of colliery waste.

The sewers and works were calculated to treat the waste of a population of 470,000 within its drainage catchment – 250,000 cubic meters of flow a day. It allowed for an increase to 600,000 people and 336,000 cubic meters a day. While the works has grown since to make use of this built in capacity, the core of it is still the 1970s construction.

There are a couple of great pictures here of the Seafield works in the later phase of construction from Beqi’s Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/beqi/15249584458/in/photolist-2mA5LtJ-mDqd6-nKHvQm-pey7rE-Nbw4CG-R5rPbT-bWa7aA-2hke88Y-2ihggSH-2matb6u-2kXrXvq-2icnQKF-2m5rEXZ-mDq4b-ebEwGu-8qgcZ6-pZhicy-mDq6J-mDq8x-mDqaM-2iXwoCr-pey7aY-ygHJ4y-2iXwp1F-2j14ecD-rt7CbW-rm8Tqd-jzryvy-7W94Hc-8HU4Mb-7afi5n-9tJyYk-bYHAS1-2j15Pv2-HLTVHu-qJPav8-pvL6DF-UD9C3y-dUwuHR-bYHBHA-7iVn9Q-2kG3sBQ-anH5nf-24XxvM-dSxUcH

https://www.flickr.com/photos/beqi/15249585368/in/photolist-2mA5LtJ-mDqd6-nKHvQm-pey7rE-Nbw4CG-R5rPbT-bWa7aA-2hke88Y-2ihggSH-2matb6u-2kXrXvq-2icnQKF-2m5rEXZ-mDq4b-ebEwGu-8qgcZ6-pZhicy-mDq6J-mDq8x-mDqaM-2iXwoCr-pey7aY-ygHJ4y-2iXwp1F-2j14ecD-rt7CbW-rm8Tqd-jzryvy-7W94Hc-8HU4Mb-7afi5n-9tJyYk-bYHAS1-2j15Pv2-HLTVHu-qJPav8-pvL6DF-UD9C3y-dUwuHR-bYHBHA-7iVn9Q-2kG3sBQ-anH5nf-24XxvM-dSxUcH

In the second picture above, notice the 3 concrete sewage inlets rising out of the ground into the screens, just below the big white shed building. These screens separated insoluble solids and flotsam out of the sewage, which were scraped off the screens, collected in skips and taken to the Corporation incinerator at Powderhall for disposal. Grit was also removed, washed and disposed of and storm tanks collected any excess inflow for later treatment.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the-doctor/3049266666/in/photolist-5Ds89S-5DrSEJ-5DnJkp-9fGgMm-5DrfHo-5DrgLj-5DrHC9-nvd9v-5DwFDL-5DnxTM-5Dns6e-5DnFkD-5DnzX2-5DrBnN-dKcPEJ-5DnoQa-5Dsbsh-5DmViR-5Dnx5K-5DrCqw-5Ds3L9-5DnVXt-5Ds1rd-5DnRNx-5DrUtN-5DrVnJ-5DshKd-5DrxFA-5DnLh8-5DrXdA-5DnCFi-5DryYw-5DrJyG-5DrwqQ-5DsgEy-5DnhzV-5DrXN7-2duPidX-5Ds9eA-5DnwfT-5Ds5XS-5Dnuft-5DrNLm-5DrLGC-5Dno4T-5DnX5D-5DnNvF-5Dnnfa-4brM4b-4W5pKr

After screening, the waste was pumped into one of the 8 sedimentation tanks (the large concrete circles) where the solids settled out into a sludge on the base of the tank. The treated liquid effluent was then drained off for disposal at the outfall. The concentrated sludge was collected and pumped to two storage tanks at Leith Docks. The sludge tanks at both Seafield and Leith Docks were fitted with a deodorising system, whereby Ozone was generated in a high voltage discharge, dissolved in water and then sprayed over the stench. I can’t comment if that worked! From the docks, the sludge would be collected by the Corporation’s new, purpose-built sewage tanker, the amusingly named MV Gardyloo.

Two or three times a week, the Gardyloo would carry it out to the outer reaches of the Forth between the Bell Rock and St. Abb’s Head (depending on the season) and then dump it overboard. In a typical display of 1970s municipal pride, the vessel was painted in the Corporation colours of maroon and white and was licensed to could carry passengers; the city would “treat” school children and pensioners to a 7-hour day trip on the boat, complete with a lunch of fish and chips from the vessel’s cafeteria. The paying public could also take this offer up for a small fee. You can see an amateur cine film of one of these trips at the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive.

This just left the liquid effluent to get rid of. This was (and still is) by means of a gigantic outfall shaft, 7m in diameter and sunk 52 meters straight down into the ground before turning through 90 degrees, reducing in diameter to 3.7m and heading out to sea for 2.8km.

The outfall tunnel was constructed according to standard colliery practices. This makes perfect sense; the miners and engineers of the Lothians coalfield had been digging roadways under the Forth in this manner for a hundred years or more. During construction, the outfall tunnel had a double track narrow-gauge, battery-powered railway in it to bring the excavated spoil back to the main shaft for disposal. The tunnel was made wider at this point to accommodate a siding of the railway for spoil wagons. The diffuser outlets were drilled down into the end of the outlet tunnel from above the surface by the jack-up rig GEM126 moored overhead in the Forth.

Work on the whole scheme proceeded remarkably quickly and efficiently, slowed down mainly by restrictions on spending. The scheme was transferred from the City of Edinburgh Corporation to Lothian Regional Council during local government reorganisations in 1975. The initially completed part of the scheme started operation in the autumn of 1976, with most of the parts of the wider scheme in place by 1978, when the Gardyloo started operations. The estimated cost in 1975 was £26.04 million, or about £224 million in 2021 money.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/martynhilbert/51527264712/in/photolist-2mvhGBJ-2jHk4qc-D4273J-qoS5Ws-MxTddp-2jQqbBv-2m5xpKV-2dYKutW-Gd1ri2-2dYKuuN-2g7UwxR-2k8irp7-GeqqHF-xxGhQA-vpaETH-wCZMRy-dK1szQ-2eHEGsf-DcfqrE-RoaGR4-paUDuG-KQC8Ra-2fb6GqV-2k6uJfn-JhTBwe-dcgZed-qoRACd-qp1AY4-LJsDXQ-qFqKWt-qFmxtC-pJqHsE-pJpZ4m-qD8Exu-qoYEdg-pJqFkJ-qoYeGx-pJDKsp-pJE6V8-qFgiLX-qoYzAR-qD8q9Q-pJqBQC-qoZUjP-qoRmdG-qoZQZx-qoS9GL-kKxrax-qoZpGD-qFqftk

The construction of the sewers was relatively incident free, however I have read that a mistake during blasting in one section caused two houses above to become so damaged they had to be demolished. I haven’t yet found out where they may have been. Update, October 2023. The houses have been found! There were in fact two different instances of subsidence as a result of the tunnelling, both in the eastern section between Seafield and McDonald Road. The first occurred in November 1972 when a sinkhole appeared in the back green of the tenement at 20 Dryden Street in Pilrig, jeopardising the stability of the tenement in front of it which was home to 6 families. While the City Engineer, Gerard Pakes, said that they were merely taking precautions, the Scotsman suggested that the tenement was “in danger of collapse” – it is still there to this day however.

The second incident occurred in August 1973 when two bungalows on Prospect Bank Crescent near Seafield began to exhibit dangerous cracks and had to be braced with a forest of scaffolding. Robert and Nellie Taylor at no. 15 and John and Catherine Walker and their 3 children at no. 17 were given a weeks notice to quit their houses, a decision that was later reversed. The householders suffered sticking doors and windows followed by cracks appearing in walls and ceilings, loose plaster, gas pipes being cut off and “intermittent shocks from underground blasting.” Residents of Prospect Bank Terrace claimed that the tunnel was being dug only 10 feet below the surface when it should have been 30 feet deep. Depute City Engineer Mr A. S. Crockett replied that there was no commitment to it being that deep and it was about 15 feet below to allow for a sufficient gradient for downhill flow. Again, the houses are there to this day so this was obviously not terminal damage.

The success of the scheme can be measured in whether or not it cleaned up the inshore waters of the Forth off of Edinburgh and Leith. Limits on the “amenity” beaches were set at 2,400 E. coli per 100ml water. The raw sewage entering the works at Seafield was 20,000,000/100ml. The scheme reduced the levels in the beach waters to 1,000/100ml in the worst flow conditions; 60% below the limit.

From 1978 to 1998, in more than 2,600 voyages, the MV Gardyloo dumped 8.5 million tonnes of the concentrated sewage sludge of the citizens of Edinburgh and Leith into the North Sea. It was as a direct result of the EC (as it was) Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive that this practice ended and secondary treatment of the sludge was finally commenced. The Gardyloo had been passed to the East of Scotland Water Authority in 1996 during another local government reform, and was sold out of service in 1999. After 5 years service as a general purpose tanker she was bought by a company in Azerbaijan and transferred to the Caspian Sea where, in a strange but somehow apt about turn, she is now the drinking water tanker Shollar!

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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The thread about the problems of sewage disposal in 19th century Edinburgh and Leith, and how something was done about it

Are we sitting comfortably? The first part of Edinburgh’s sewage history was the Thread About the East Foul Burn and the Irrigated Meadows. Let us now turn to Chapter 2 of that story;the drainage and sewage problems of Victorian Edinburgh and how to fix them.

Our story starts with a little revision of the topography of the city; without it what follows just doesn’t make sense for the simple and important reason that sewage will only run downhill. So here is a topographically coloured map of central Edinburgh. White is highest, then red, orange, yellow, green, light blue; and then dark blue is lowest. Simple physics dictates that a liquid – and therefore sewage – will flow downhill from the red areas via the other colours of the rainbow to dark blue – and cannot go the other way. It will continue to do so until it either collects somewhere on the way from where it cannot escape, or finds an outflow to the sea. The dark blue channel in the top left is the Water of Leith valley. The Castle Rock and long tail of the High Street and Canongate can be seen in the middle. Calton Hill to the top and Arthur’s Seat is the red and white promontory on the right.

And here is a 1784 town plan overlaid on that. The First New Town has only just really begun to be built; the black blocks show the completed buildings and most are just plans at this point, and there is very little built to the north of George Street, so the starting point of what is happening to Edinburgh’s sewage during this time is that little of it is draining away towards the north and the Water of Leith.

No, the vast majority from old Edinburgh (and the southern part of the First New Town) ends up draining east (orange) into what is known as the East Foul Burn. The Southside is relatively lightly populated and its waste (yellow) cannot proceed east but instead goes west into the Boroughloch (now drained as The Meadows), where it slowly winds its way west into the Water of Leith via the Lochrin Burn. The north part of the First New Town (pink) has a relatively small contribution to make towards the city’s waste and goes downhill and north to the Water of Leith by one route or another.

Up until the mid-late 18th century, it is the orange lines where most of the waste is; just look at the density (black) of housing in the Old Town, Canongate and Grassmarket and then reflect that most of it is 4 or 5 storeys tall or more! Layers and layers of people living cheek-by-jowl and not a flushing toilet or underground sewer to share amongst them. Notice also that much less of the sewage heads into the Nor’ Loch than you might expect from the popular tale of it being the city’s sewer (the Nor’ Loch is that ancient, man made loch to the north of the castle that was part of the city’s defences, and while it was foul and polluted it was not the main sewer).

At this point most of the city’s sewage is simply cast directly from pisspot and chamber pot into the simple gutters that ran down the closes, where it mixed and collected with all the animal dung, food waste and industrial detritus of life and found its way into open sewers . These were little more than ditches, covered with stone capping slabs in places to allow them to be crossed, and of which there were 3 principal routes:

1. The first is into the Nor’ Loch valley, via the North Back of Canongate (Calton Road) and Abbeyhill
2. The second is via the Cowgate and South Back of Canongate (Holyrood Road) and into the King’s Park and joins with number 1 near the Clockmill House in the park
3. The third is from the Southside and the St. Leonard’s and Dumbiedykes areas where it enters the King’s Park and then joins with number 2

The flow was then east towards the Firth of Forth.

The route to the Firth of Forth via the East Foul Burn was the remarkable piece of aquatic engineering of the Irrigated Meadows. In a time before artificial fertilisers, human as well as animal manure was vitally important for food production. These meadows, constantly replenished by controlled inundation by fertilising sewage, could grow multiple crops of fodder each year which fed the city’s horses and dairy cows. The important point being made here is that the sewage system of the city back then was much more complicated and managed than we might give it credit for – as soon as the waste left the centre of population – but it was nothing to do with public health and everything to do with the practicalities and economics of food production. And private profit for the landowners!

This system was progressively sent underground into proper sewers through the 19th century. The irrigated meadow system persisted right up to the 1920s when it was bypassed by a proper sewer, the land drained and given over to council and bungalow housing estates.

Jumping through time now to round about 1850, there has been a fairly obvious change to the old system as a large part of the growing city is no longer in the catchment of the East Foul Burn system (orange) but now the Water of Leith (yellow). And to there it did flow in great abundance!

The Water of Leith was far less suited to being a sewer than the East Foul Burn as its flow was highly seasonal (far more so than it is now since compensation reservoirs were built in the 19th century to maintain the water level and flow in the river for industry). During the periods of little to no flow the sewage would collect and gather and fester. Additionally, this river was tapped by numerous mill lades – large and small – and the slower water flowing through these meant that the sewage would settle out of the water, silting up the lades and collecting behind the weirs, “by the middle of the 19th century the condition of this river had seriously deteriorated“. But this was a nuisance mainly of the sight and smell of raw sewage; it was not until the Second Cholera Epidemic of 1848-1849 that it was finally proved and widely understood that water polluted by sewage had a pivotal role in spreading disease.

Not only do you have the raw sewage of the New Town and the expanding north of Edinburgh carried directly into the Water of Leith, the dense industry along the route; below Coltbridge at Roseburn there was milling, distilling, tanning, papermaking, soapmaking, chemical works, gas works and more. All of these were dumping their waste and by products straight into the river, from where they flowed directly to the town of Leith. As the 19th century wore on, these industries began to use progressively less water for power as steam took over, but instead used it for new processes such as cooling steam engines and flushing waste away – neither of which required the maintenance expense of headwater lades, many of which simply silted up with sewage from lack of use.

Something had to be don; but it was not clear specifically what. Industry was fairly happy so long as the river flowed, and it was kept flowing by a series of “compensation reservoirs” in the Pentland Hills which kept up a reliable supply of water in the upper reaches of the Water of Leith. Reformers and residents desired a change to clean up the river and their environment. This was stymied by interminable jurisdiction conflicts; there was no single authority or jurisdiction along the river and there were long standing legal rights for industries to extract water and fill their lades.

The first meaningful effort for change was made in 1853 by the Edinburgh Police Commission (the “Police” back then were mainly concerned in handling the city lighting, cleansing, sanitation, weights and measures, some taxation etc. Law enforcement was something they did on the side). The Police engaged consulting engineers to look at the state of the lower river (beyond Coltbridge / north of Roseburn), who surveyed it carefully and came to the logical conclusion that it was full of shit.

The engineers’ report made 2 simple reconsiderations;

1. Clear the river bed of as many unnecessary obstructions where sewage accumulated (weirs and lades) as possible
2. Build an “interceptor sewer“, that is one that intercepted all the existing sewer outflows discharging into the river, collected their output, and made sure they never found their way into the river

The Police Commissioners accepted the report without hesitation and in 1854 the Edinburgh Police Amendment Act was passed. Part 1 of the scheme was implemented with much struggle from reluctant and recalcitrant mill and land owners, but Part 2 came to nothing. The success of Part 1 helped Edinburgh, as it assisted in the flow of raw sewage down the river, but it did nothing for poor old Leith. As the river slowed in the basin of the Port of Leith the sediment and suspended sewage settled out of the water and silted up the bed. By 1855 this was causing the Leith Dock Commissioners a serious problem. They complained that the Water of Leith now “flushed so well that a foot of mud and solid filth had been deposited… this created such a noxious and offensive effluvium and stench, as to be exceedingly prejudicial to the health of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood“. Leith began to lobby Edinburgh for a joint solution to the problem; namely resurrecting the plan for the unbuilt interceptor sewer, and expanding it to catch the outflow of some 180 drains, constituting the whole north and west of Edinburgh and most of Leith.

A scheme for the sewers was drawn up by the finest consulting engineers the city had to offer; Thomas and David Stevenson (of the “Lighthouse” dynasty).

The city was further assisted by another Stevenson (no relation); a son of Glasgow and analytical chemist called Stevenson Macadam, who undertook the first chemical analysis of the contents of the river. Coincidentally he was the consultant chemist to the Northern Lighthouse Board for whom the Stevenson brothers were the principal engineers. Macadam’s work proved that although there was industrial waste in the river north of Roseburn, there was no “putrefaction” as a result, but just north of Roseburn where the West Foul Burn and city’s sewers began to enter it, “the quality deteriorated drastically“. Macadam didn’t mince his words. The river was receiving the raw sewage of “100,000 people and was charged with fecal matter of the most disgusting and abominable character“. It collected in “hot-beds of decomposing filth from which abundantly offensive gases were diffused“.

It took about 2 years of legal and political wrangling between Edinburgh and Leith to agree who should be liable for paying for what (it turned out that Edinburgh wasn’t legally liable for its own shit or the problems it caused once it entered the Water of Leith). It took the intervention of the Lord Justice-General (a senior Scottish judge) to put the legal liability to one side and he adjudicated that Edinburgh should be paying for what to do with its own waste, not Leith, where it had ended up. Despite opposition from mill owners and the usual nay sayers of local politics – averse to any change that they didn’t think impacted them – the Edinburgh and Leith Sewerage Act for the construction of the interceptor sewer was passed in 1864.

The next part of this story shall look at cleaning up the Water of Leith and the building of the interceptor sewers.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.