Only three years ago, Britain's rivers were rated among the cleanest in Europe. Last week many were full of dead fish, industrial wastes and human excrement. The nation's 80,000 sewage-plant workers, whose wages average $33.60 a week, had gone on strike for a 20% raise. In their absence, management crews bravely tried to run 5,000 municipal treatment plants, which normally cleanse 3 billion gallons of raw sewage a day. In some places, management failed; one official described the stench as "appalling."
In Bristol, a daily torrent of 50 million gallons of wastes poisoned the once sweet Avon River. At Blackpool, raw sewage...
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