The Great Stink in the 21st century? Problematizing the sewage scandal in England and envisioning a new infrastructure ideal

The Great Stink of 1858 saw politicians in the Houses of Parliament commission a new sewer system for London at an unprecedented scale and cost. Political consensus was driven by the stench emanating from the river Thames, filled with faeces. Today, England is experiencing parallels to the first Great Stink, with untreated sewage discharging into the country’s watercourses for a total duration of 3.6 million hours in 2024. The scale of sewer discharges has heightened tensions between the public and the water industry, with activists leading civic action that includes social media campaigns, bill boycotts, and street protests. We carried out an ethnographic study in the Yorkshire region with the aim of analyzing and exploring emerging tensions between stakeholders. We found that the root causes of the sewage problem were deeply contested, creating an uneven foundation for sanitary reform. Stakeholder groups understood the sewage crisis differently and were often found to be calling for competing solutions. To theorize these divergent problematizations, we draw from sanitation imaginaries literature that considers collective assumptions about waste infrastructures. Sanitary developments in England have long aspired to the modern sanitation ideal, seeking to discretely remove household waste waters, transporting and treating elsewhere, eliminating public health risk alongside minimal environmental impact. The contemporary sanitation crisis, or “Great Stink of the 21st century,” has shattered this modern infrastructure ideal and social imaginary, causing rifts between stakeholders about how and what progress can be made. Overall, historical parallels serve to remind that political consensus and a shared vision among stakeholders are necessary conditions for sanitary revolution in England.