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Andy Arthur

24 Oct, 5 tweets, 2 min read

https://twitter.com/cocteautriplets/status/1348566794454380544

Your reminder that until 1976, all of the sewage of Edinburgh and Leith flowed untreated via a Victorian sewer network into the Forth

https://twitter.com/cocteautriplets/status/1348566794454380544

Your reminder that until 1998, the concentrated sludge of Edinburgh & Leith's sewage was dumped in the outer Forth estuary by tanker

https://twitter.com/cocteautriplets/status/1421035921198231554?t=Rx7b62fSg-865n1AVQMQow&s=19

It was directly as a 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 story of the construction of the modern 1976 sewer network is almost unknown, and quite possibly one of *the* great 20th century Engineering marvels in Edinburgh.

Your reminder that in 1970, a single incorrectly connected domestic sewer caused a typhoid outbreak in Edinburgh

https://twitter.com/WeirdScotland/status/1298230852183302145?t=hUq-q37t6MkjhXljbYgmlQ&s=19

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More from @cocteautriplets

Andy Arthur

@cocteautriplets

24 Oct

What better way to round off a Sunday evening than talking once again about sewage. Specifically, part 3 of the Edinburgh sewer story - the great untold engineering feat of the 1970s Interceptor Sewer Scheme.

To recap, in the 1950s, Edinburgh's sewage scheme was to collect all the effluent and then pipe out to sea and hope for the best. After the big Victorian schemes to intercept the waste going into the Water of Leith, the system had progressed along these lines as the city grew

The system basically prevented raw sewage entering the major rivers and burns and conducted the waste, sewage and runoff from the natural drainage catchments of the city towards the Forth.

Read 40 tweets

Andy Arthur

@cocteautriplets

23 Oct

When coffee snobism, techbros, subscription services, unnecessarily energy and packaging intensive processes and venture capital collide, you know the result will inevitably be WTFifying.

I am once again asking the men to stop inventing stuff that doesn't need invented

For the avoidance of doubt, they make coffee, freeze it, package it in plastic pods, package that in display packaging, package that in insulated postal packaging, send it to you, you store it frozen, and then when you want a coffee you put a pod in a cup and add boiling water

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Andy Arthur

@cocteautriplets

20 Oct

There is a building in Craiglockhart that frequently comes up in property listings (as it is now converted to a lot of retirement homes) with the romantic and ancient sounding name of Perdrixknowe

The name is straightforward enough, Perdrix is the French for Partridge, Knowe is the Scots for a hillock or a mound (from the English Knoll). Often a knowe specifically meant a gather place for fairies.

James Steuart, in his history of Colinton Parish, records that the Partridge Knowe, or Patrickes Know (Perdrix frequently became Patrick in Scots placenames) was the rise in the ground to the north of the Craiglockhart and Craighouse hills.

Read 18 tweets

Andy Arthur

@cocteautriplets

19 Oct

Every time you see a proposal for a new station it's a big car park and access road, a couple of fugly lift towers and a bus shelter stuck on the platform as an afterthought