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>“What’s the moral of the story?” he asked. “You can make up your own, but for me, this is public service in its finest form – unseen, largely unknown and rarely heralded – but done with selfless dedication year after year simply because of what would happen to the rest of us if it wasn’t.”

This is my big takeaway, I know a lot of people are against government projects. But in this case especially, where is the profit motive to fix this problem? I can't see any other solution than long term investment in the long term interest of the country. What other entity could ensure long term commitment to such an unprofitable project?

The owners of these two properties, many of the home owners around the country, many commercial and other building owners, as well as the building and insurance industries all have possible profit motives.

I'm not going to argue whether government is better or worse here, but it's actually not uncommon in the agricultural industry for similar kind of action being taken against invasive pests that is led by producers' associations which are private organizations. Including very long term action for example there are cases of land being bought up so as to cease farming activity on it indefinitely to prevent pest spread (e.g., with Panama disease in some places).

Arguably it also should not have depended on generosity or public service to deal with the problem, the land owners should have been fairly compensated.

Granted, but who is going to spearhead such an effort? Organize people, resources, money etc. I mean, at some point, such an endeavor, private or public, is so close to quacking like government, you might as well just call it government.
It’s called self-government, which is not merely electing some mooks to send to some distant capital to professionally practice legislation (which is all they will ever do in their time there, and so will always be seeking to innovate in this space for good or for ill). It’s also taking an interest in you and yours and cooperating with your neighbors to resolve common issues, and where and when you have conflicting interests, resolving those disputes, privately, or in a court of Law if that is not possible, only taking to legislatures as a last resort.
This is how local governments should be run. Not just elect officials, but have the citizens participate in the day-to-day affairs.
I have to be pedantic about this distinction because otherwise I feel like my point will be lost.

Not local government, self-government. Local government is still politicians and bureaucrats. Self-government is the exercise of your own political power, private property rights and capabilities and rights as a citizen. These are not limited to ticking some names on a ballot once or twice a year.

I don't understand how what you wrote addresses my comment. I listed some groups who might be motivated to do it, and gave an example of somewhat similar private groups organizing to take action that collectively benefit their member groups with industry associations that are not a government.

> Granted, but who is going to spearhead such an effort?

I suppose this is a rhetorical question, which does not help me understand your point of view. Can you just explain why for example a home insurance industry group (or any of the other interested groups) would not organize to deal with this problem in the absence of government action?

Home insurers have three options, as I see it:

1) Pay for a super expensive termite remediation on someone’s property in hopes that it will guarantee that other customers’ properties won’t get termites

2) Raise premiums to account for termite infestation risk

3) Deny termite damage claims

There’s only one thing on that list I can’t imagine them doing

I feel like news reports of invasive species usually end up with the invaders becoming endemic. Nice to see a successful eradication for once!
Yes, but it also demonstrates how difficult complete eradication of invasive species actually is. In this case, there was only a single location, and eradication still took decades and large amounts of money. Now imagine if there had been colonies at several different locations.

Most invasive species are only noticed when they are much more established and complete eradication is no longer an effective strategy.

And it just takes another crate from a country where they exist to have to start over again...
It's actually fascinating to me that any individual with a grudge against England could singlehandedly make termites endemic, spreading them to a few hundred sites with basically 0 chance of being caught, but nobody ever bothers.

(same with zebra mussels, asian carp, etc etc in the US)

I visited Flinders Island in South Australia a few months ago. It's fairly isolated but they have a mouse/rat/cat population they are working to eradicate at great expense. Mice supposedly last arrived in the tent bags of visiting campers. Which of course made me wonder if that could happen again quite easily with mice stowed aboard an another visiting boat, etc.
It's nice that a government program actually ever solved the problem it was meant to address and shut down, but I hope they didn't do it too soon:

> After no signs of termite activity were detected for the past 10 years, the Saunton termite colony has officially been declared dead

> There have been false dawns before in this battle of the beasties. Going into the new millennium there were no sightings of the termites for nine years. Then their beadlike antennae were again spotted rooting around in the soil, resulting in the eradication and monitoring programme being extended repeatedly until this year.

Seems like the same distribution that produced a result after nine years could produce one after ten. Hopefully they got them all the first time.

> It's nice that a government program actually ever solved the problem it was meant to address and shut down

This site can be so exhausting. Government is not necessarily the enemy. Stop seeing everything through those glasses, please. Government is the organization we created to do things together. That's all it is. Stop implying that it's always the enemy and that everything the government does is bound to end in failure.

> Government is the organization we created to do things together. That's all it is

Is this really what you believe? What role does power play in the formation of governments?

Devon is a nice area, otherwise I think a small subterranean fusion bomb would have been the tidiest solution.
With some luck you'd end up with radioactivity resistant termites owning the whole place.
Hmm, yes, perhaps I didn't put enough thought into my 15-second idea. That about summarized my life.
But saturating the ground with liquid nitrogen (it kills if it displaces oxygen), I wonder why wouldn’t that the correct idea.
Come down to south Devon (by the sea) and you'll wish that bomb was an airburst
Alien invasion … excavation revealing hidden secrets … threatening to destroy middle England … government scientists hell bent on eradication …

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatermass_and_the_Pit_(film...

For that long and "bloody-minded" an eradication effort, in so small an area (100m long, 30m deep) - it seems like it'd have been far quicker and cheaper to (say) saturate the ground with liquid nitrogen. (Assuming that the termites would all either freeze, or die for lack of oxygen.)
That sounds quite convincing until you actually try to do it 8) Liquid N is bloody cold until it hits the environment (for want of a better word). Initially I thought of going in with boiling water but that suffers from the same problem - that there bloody equilibrium thingie.

I'd also look into something like liquid grout. You use that (I'm a Civ Eng grad, IT company owner) to stabilize ground. That depends a lot on the rock involved. North Devon and sandy soil mentioned so it will be tricky.

I think it could have been done quicker but you have to bear in mind that people's houses are on top and the council's and other groups would have worried about that and a lot of other factors.

Neither the LN nor the boiling water would need to literally saturate the soil. Nor reach thermal equilibrium (-196C for LN, 100C for boiling water.) So long as conditions (temperature, O2 availability, etc.) in every cc of the targeted volume were nicely beyond what any termite could survive, that'd be enough.

LN would plausibly 1) create a long-lived hypoxic zone, and 2) have minimal effects on the groundwater, so I hand-waved that idea. Your boiling water would probably work through the "mud" they might use to line tunnels and their nest far quicker.

It's just as well you and I were not appointed to deal with this. It could have got ugly.

Let's start off with demolishing the houses with a controlled explosion that just implodes the structures so that we don't fire termites off into the blue. Carefully distribute the house remains to the perimeter. All crossings of the perimeter will involve a thorough decontamination.

Now we drill two metre (6'ish) deep holes every two metres with a diameter of at least 32mm (1.25"). Then we treat the problem:

Find the perimeter of infestation (may have to destroy more properties). Create a 3m (10') deep trench, 30cm (12") wide along the entire perimeter. Fill the trench with standard 1-2-3 conc. Make sure it is vibrated properly and use a viscosity admix. to ensure the trench is properly filled.

We'll need some heavy lift helis eg Chinooks - several are available from the Army and RAF or perhaps EH101 based jobbies - Army. We'll also need some containers and I think a 8 cu yard skip ie a standard builder's skip will do nicely. Yes we do have a wacky approach to units here in the UK. Fill the skips with boiling water and use the helis to drop the water on the area from above. Consider salting the water to lower the boiling point and make it more toxic in an environmentally responsible way.

Finally we go in with a fleet of ready mix lorries with pumps and long hoses. We pump a cementitious slurry into the holes and then finish with a capping slab of conc as required to support subsequent structures.

I'm actually half Devonian (mum born in Dartmouth) and I studied Civ Eng in Plymouth. I now live next door in Somerset.

I suspect they know more about it than you. This worked. For the first time in history.
I was thinking hydrogen peroxide, since it seeps into the ground just like water and decays into water. Also I imagine it's much cheaper than liquid nitrogen.
That could be cool on a small scale. But H2O2 decays into H2O and oxygen, and is a very reactive oxidizer. With organic matter in the soil, it will produce all sorts of interesting chemicals. Those will end up in the groundwater.

(Or, just look at the fire diamond for H2O2. Proposing to bring tons of that stuff into a residential area would not be popular.)

I facetiously recommended a tactical thermonuclear explosive in a comment below, but on a more serious note, this was an issue of national security and surely they should have just used eminent domain to oust these people from their homes and then used some radical scorched earth solution as you suggest to just destroy this menace without prejudice. The British government is normally very judicious with eminent domain and will destroy your home if it is causing an unpleasant wind diversion for some species of rare seagull.
"The British government is normally very judicious with eminent domain and will destroy your home if it is causing an unpleasant wind diversion for some species of rare seagull."

Oh no they won't! Could you provide some more details please.

One recalls the recent story where an impostor sold a man's house without his consent and the British government was just "sorry, we signed the papers, it belongs to him now"
That's bad, but nothing to do with eminent domain.
The UK govt doesn't generally get involved in house sales. That sounds like a tale of good old fashioned fraud and I think I know the one you are on about - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-59069662

The Police response looks a bit shit to start with but nothing to do with the government - Welsh or British.

If you are going to have a go at this sort of nonsense then you need to sound credible. You are not going to bring down civilisation as we know it with a comment like that.

Destroying the homes was out of the question as the article states, the danger of spreading even a couple of reproduce-capable termites was too high.
I didn't understand that part. Sure, a conventional demolition, where debris is carted off to the landfill wouldn't work in this case. But surely onsite burning would do the trick?
Termites can dig very deep. The final inspection went 30 meters down. Burning down 30m into the earth would require something far beyond what "onsite burning" usually involves. (Hence the "small subterranean fusion bomb" comment from kingcharles.)
That would just remove the food-source. Removing the food source for a colony that you would rather have stay-put seems like it would be counterproductive.
This is a foreshadowing headline you read on a newspaper at the beginning of a SciFi movie about earth being invaded by the buggers.
Pop trivia: up the road from Saunton is a massive stretch of golden beach called Saunton Sands. Its shallow incline makes it perfect for new surfers, and it's breadth made it perfect for long walks - as Robbie Williams did in the video for Angels where he end up getting attacked by a helicopter.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=luwAMFcc2f8

So now you know.

Interesting and scary to think what will happen with climate change - will termites move north? https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/termites-and-climate-c...
Do governments typically provide reimbursement to the household for holding their house hostage for over 27 years? Or did the government just declared they can't and forced the homeowners cooperation?

It's not clear from the article.

Forgive me if I missed it in the article, but what species of termite was it and where is it native to?
His constituent believed a previous occupant had accidentally imported the termites in soil brought from the Canary Islands via some non-native plants, he said.
If any foreign actor wants a >1000x ROI on economic sabotage...
This is the plot of Gears of War
But for one crucial detail: Gears wasn't set in South West England.

I can see why. It's a bit... understated.

“Roit on! It’s the Cole Train, moi luvver!”