London’s brand-new £5 billion super sewer is finally finished

London's infamous super sewer is finally complete. Officially known as the Thames Tideway Tunnel, the giant poo chute has been in the building works for the last eight years costing around £5 billion. Rejoice, because it's just been announced it could be carrying Londoners' waste by as soon as next year. 

The 25km, £4.5 billion tunnel, which is wide enough to fit three buses side by side, promises to divert 34 of the most polluting sewage outflows which flow into the Thames. To mark the construction of the tunnel being completed, a massive 1,200 tonne concrete lid was lifted onto a shaft in east London today (March 27). 

It will work by connecting dozens of storm overflow drains beneath the river. Rather than become a like-for-like replacement for London’s current sewage system, the super sewer is intended to keep sewage from spilling out into the Thames during storms. Testing of the tunnel will begin this summer. 

‘This is the moment we've all been waiting for,’ Andy Mitchell, chief executive of Thames Tideway told the BBC. ‘We're going to capture the vast majority of the sewage that comes into the river and it will mean a cleaner river.’

Hooray for the super sewer. We bet London's rat population can't wait to get down there. 

Listen to Time Out’s brilliant podcast ‘Love Thy Neighbourhood’: the newest episode with Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen in Greenwich is out now.