The water companies call them "combined sewer overflows" but campaigners call them unregulated and a danger to wildlife in our rivers. But now many water companies are resisting attempts to impose regulations on them.
Just before the privatisation of the water companies thousands of these pipes were temporarily lifted out of regulation. Twenty years later and they are still unregulated. Which means when something goes wrong there's no legal redress.
Here's the science of sewage. These pictures come from Manchester where this drain released raw sewage. This causes an explosion in bacteria which use up all the oxygen. Fish die because they can't breathe.
According to the ;
"Discharges from Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) are a regular occurrence and can happen following as little as 2mm of rain."
is the legal arm of The Angling Trust and they've been fighting a battle over these pipes for some time. Under freedom of information legislation they discovered over 3000 of them across the country, over 500 in the Midlands.
We've been to track some of them down, but if you want to see if there is one near you you can download this NoticeanSchedule_ST.pdf[243KB PDF] from Severn Trent or if you live in Herefordshire this NoticeanSchedule_WW.pdf[271KB PDF] from Welsh Water. Ordnance Survey locations are included. If you find any near you let us know what sort of state they are in.
In January the legal battle to regulate these pipes continues and we'll keep you posted.
Emails going back to 1996 have been leaked or stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and have appeared on the web.
The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has already reported it , blogged about it and had a discussion about it on the Today programme this morning. Link scroll down to 7.35am. It's also been the lead story on .
Commentator Bryan posting as TrueToo asked for my opinion on all this. I'll try not to repeat what others have said and since this is a blog about science will focus on that.
First of all there is a lot of data here. What I've looked at certainly looks genuine but it is possible some parts may be faked. I should put on record I certainly haven't read it all but dipped in and out. I've also kept an eye on other parts of the blogosphere as they go through it.
So far I can't see any sign of a "smoking iceberg".
In those cases where people seem to think they have found evidence of problems I remain to be convinced. Often we just don't have enough context in these emails to understand what is being discussed. On other occasions CRU researchers are accused of using inappropriate language. Well let's be honest, who doesn't in emails we assume to be private?
It's also clear that these scientists are working on research in rather extreme circumstances. An enormous amount of interest across the world from people who are often unable to understand the data but demand it anyway. How far a scientist should engage with such outside interests is an interesting argument. But if they chose to do so then it will often add nothing to their actual work. And it will certainly distract them from it.
Conspiring to avoid public scrutiny, insulting dissenting scientists and manipulating evidence are nothing new to science. Indeed as this demonstrates all these accusations and more can be laid at the feet of Newton. And we're not going to repeal the laws of motion.
But from my limited troll through these emails this would appear to be a group of scientists doing world-class research and trying to politely deal with a wide variety of enquiries about their work.
In some cases I'm amazed their private emails about all this are as temperate as they are.
In the meantime the wisdom of the crowd will descend on all this data and if there is anything problematic in there I'm sure they will find it eventually.
In the meantime has perhaps the best summing up I've seen on the web so far.
An average story on Midlands Today is around one and a half minutes. But even with nearly two for tonight's story on Birmingham's first zero carbon house we just couldn't fit everything in. We just didn't get round to the floors made from clay recycled from the garden and the toilets that flush with rainwater collected from the roof among other points.
The idea behind a zero-carbon house is that it doesn't use fossil fuels for anything. Not the heating, electricity, nothing.
So in this post we'll go through some of the clever green tech I had to leave out from the tv report and offer some top tips from architect John Christophers on how to green-up your home and save money too.
Half of Mr Christophers' house is a new build which joins on to a 170 year old two-story house. The idea is to show that it is possible to apply cutting edge green-technologies to existing homes and not just when you start from scratch.
If there's a sliding scale of actions it's practical to take, with most of us at one end and a very green architect with a conscience at the other, then the top tips for most of us are to install energy efficient lighting, better insulation and draught excluders.
Beyond that you can make better use of light with larger windows and mirrors and install a more efficient boiler. If you want to tear out the interior and start again you could also look to install a membrane in the walls and floor to keep draughts out and heat in. You'll also need a system to control the air flow making sure you have fresh air while minimising heat loss.
Then you come to the vexed question of generating your own power. Mr Christophers has decided against a wind turbine, not enough puff in urban Birmingham. But he has included solar-power both to heat water and generate electricity. He should get money for any spare electricity he sends to the grid and also a subsidy for the electricity he uses himself.
It's not just an energy efficient home for humans either. At the front and back there are built in bird and bat boxes hidden in the brick. It's a striking building that could have a huge impact on our homes, both existing and still to be built.
The house has a where you can find even more information. And the Birmingham Post did a earlier in the year which has much more technical information about zero carbon houses.
The expanding bipolar shell of the helium nova V445 Puppis.
Sometimes the title of a doesn't really do things justice. Translating things into journalistic shorthand (essential when talking to busy producers) what we have here is a "rumbling time-bomb vampire-star about to unlock the secrets of the universe".
That's what this artist's impression shows and there's an impressive computer animation . Astronomers from the University of Warwick and others have been watching V445 for over two years now.
V445 Puppis is a star that sucks in matter from its companion star neighbour. Every now and again it gobbles up so much there is a massive nova explosion and V445 throws off this material at speeds up to 30 million miles an hour.
Watching this process allows astronomers to work out V445 is 25,000 light-years from us and is more than 10,000 times brighter than the Sun. This picture shows the first time-lapse image of the most recent observable explosion taken over two years. You can see the cloud of gases roaring away from the star over that time.
But there may well come a point where V445, a white dwarf star, gobbles up so much material from its companion that it will blow itself to bits. Astronomers would really like to see this as they think this would be a Type Ia supernova which would help answer some nagging questions about how the universe works. In particular the role of "dark energy" in the accelerating expansion of our universe.
As is the way the artist's impression looks even more impressive than the actual pictures. Until you realise the detail in the images from the are the telescopic equivalent of identifying a pound coin at a distance of 40 kilometres.
Much more information and .
Today I met up with Professor Bob Critolph at the University of Warwick. We were discussing his research on heat pumps. Aiming to create better air conditioners for cars and more efficient boilers for heating homes.
You can read more about the general ideas behind heat pumps here.
Bob reminded me I had interviewed him before, over 10 years ago. Then he'd been working on solar powered refrigerators. Ideal for keeping vaccines cool in remote locations with no electrical supply.
This was also based on his work on heat pumps, the idea being this approach was more efficient and robust than using solar cells to directly generate electricity.
I asked him what happened to the work. For the most part he said they took it as far as they could but had run out of money. The ideas and research are out there for others who want to take things further.
But there was something left from his solar powered fridge research and it was in the car park if I fancied a look. And here is the first picture of it. A large walk in solar powered fridge. Much bigger than the prototypes I remembered.
It's a piece of work they've been asked to do by an American company working with the US Government. Taking a guess it looks like this larger prototype will be used keeping food refrigerated for troops in various desert environments.
Next week on Midlands Today we'll be looking at the technology used to build one of our first "zero carbon" houses. That's carbon as in climate change gas, CO2.
The idea of a "zero carbon" home is that not only does it not use energy (which of course produces CO2) but that you actually generate power too. In theory this house won't get an electricity bill, it will get a cheque from the energy company instead!
I'll update this blog next week with much more information but in the meantime the house is nearly finished and they're having an open day tomorrow (Saturday). So if you are in Birmingham and want to poke about for yourself this has all the details.
It is a fascinating building and perhaps one day all our homes will be built like this.
I'm David Gregory, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Science Correspondent for the West Midlands. My first law states: "Science is the answer." There is no second law. Feel free to drop me a line: 