Grime and punishment: The retired cops protecting our sewers

After a 30-year career as a police officer, Stephen Williams now spends his days fighting fatbergs as part of a team of former officers turned sewer detectives flushing out a major problem across Southern Water’s region. Ruth Williams speaks to the former copper about trading a life of fighting crime to fighting grime.

Retirement clearly didn’t suit Stephen Williams – or his dog.

After more than three decades in the police force, latterly as a dog handler, Williams stepped down a decade ago, along with his faithful bloodhound Hector (pictured above).

The pair had a fascinating and varied career together, with Hector’s position as the UK’s only scent discrimination dog taking them all over the country in pursuit of missing people – from hardened criminals on the run to lost children.

They even found themselves caught up in the notorious 2010 hunt for murderer Raoul Moat alongside survival expert Ray Mears, who offered his tracking expertise, and footballer Paul Gascoigne, who turned up at the Scottish border with a fishing rod and some chicken.

After all this excitement, a quiet retirement wasn’t on the card for Williams, who sought out a role targeting a different kind of criminal underworld.

In 2013 Williams joined Southern Water as a network protection manager. Hector came with him – his sophisticated nose able to pinpoint a specific individual scent, put to work sniffing out offending sources of fat, oil and grease that block sewer pipes.

Williams smiles as he recalls training Hector to assist in uncovering these great drain robberies, admittedly as a novelty. No wonder the pair were booked to appear on The One Show. Sadly Hector passed away before his moment of fame, during the 2015 Downton Abbey Christmas special.

Williams, however, has continued to prove grime doesn’t pay and refuses to be fazed by even the biggest of global brands.

Sher-block Holmes

Fats, oils and greases (FOGs) getting flushed down drains and into sewer networks cause millions of pounds of damage each year. It costs the water sector £180 million each year to unclog blockages, with 60% of these attributable to FOG.

In a bid to find new ways of addressing the problem, Southern became the first company to employ a dedicated network protection team to stop FOGs getting into sewers and causing problems across the networks.

Five former officers now working for Southern use their investigation skills to trace blockages through pipes and find repeat offenders who keep blocking drains. The team has helped the company drive down the number of blockages caused by FOGs and has gone head to head with nationwide chains to stop the block.

The network protection team insert cameras into narrow sewer pipes to identify where FOGs enter the system and, therefore, which establishment has flushed it. They work closely with environmental health teams to identify and deal with problems.

“Not in a million years did I think I would be policing takeaways,” Williams tells Utility Week. “But it’s a surprisingly engaging topic using familiar investigative and people skills to follow the trail of where a blockage comes from.”

This is how the team came up against one of the biggest brands in the world, after Williams twice had to visit a McDonald’s restaurant in West Sussex, several months apart. “We followed the trail of grease up the sewer,” Williams explains. “I talked to the restaurant manager on both occasions and warned him about the problem and the seriousness of not doing FOG management.”

Grease management advice was issued but months later Williams was called back to the same location and saw evidence that oil had continued to be improperly disposed of from the restaurant. Williams explained he followed the same approach he used on the force to interview a suspect under caution in accordance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE).

The manager who had previously signed and dated Williams’ log book denied having any previous interactions with him or the team before Williams explained the severity of the situation.

“My phone was red hot for three days from McDonald’s saying ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that’, but the legal wrangling says I can; I’m a regulator of the sewer so I have the power to do this.”

Within a week, Williams says he was visited by the head of restaurant services at McDonald’s who accepted a caution under Section 111 of the Water Industry Act 1991 in lieu of prosecution.

The restaurant chain later rolled out a multimillion pound grease management programme to sites nationwide, and its head of restaurants took part in a FOG summit to share experiences of making improvements with other hospitality operators.

“Now all water companies are speaking nationally to the facilities or environmental directors of these big chains, because they are the ones who can make things happen. Greene King pub group told all of its managers if they get a visit from the water company, head office will prioritise them.” 

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