The Leader podcast: Deep underground in London’s ‘super sewer’

This week, we’ve already taken you on the first passenger journey on Crossrail, but what else is going on beneath us in the capital?

London’s new £4.2 billion Thames Tideway Tunnel, or ‘super sewer’, is due to open in 2025 to help cope with the capital’s overflowing waste water.

With the existing system, when there’s heavy rain, sewage overflows into the River Thames, polluting the water and killing marine life, which happens up to 60 times a year.

We take a trip down into one of the 70-metre deep project’s cavernous bores, at its Battersea riverside access shaft, to meet project manager Ignacio Tognaccini - and hear some surprising subterranean music.

In today’s episode we’ll also be looking at the challenges of digging through London’s damp clay while avoiding hundreds of years of other infrastructure projects, and making sure these huge bores don’t collapse in on themselves.

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