MPs to reject "make water firms cut sewage discharges"

Thu 28 Oct 2021, 08:23

A few comments on this thread:

While the Evenlode Catchment Partnership is going to do a lot of excellent and important work seeking new ways to manage water resources, I’m afraid I can’t share Liz Leffman’s confidence that the ECP or the Thames Water Smarter Catchment initiative will be at all engaged in putting pressure on Thames Water to address sewage discharges. Principally because these are Thames Water funded initiatives focussed on addressing a range of issues – other than sewage dumping.  If you read the Thames Water sponsored plan you won’t find a single measure to reduce sewage dumping or to address the failing infrastructure.  Just more monitoring to tell you what is already well known: that the water is badly polluted with high levels of phosphates and nitrates, largely as a result of sewage discharges.

One group that is making a big impact in our constituency is Windrush Against Sewage Pollution.  Their most recent report into breaches of permits by Thames Water was published only a couple of weeks ago.  In it they highlight that the Witney constituency was the 6^th worst in England by total hours of spilling to watercourses at 13,295 hours in 2019.  Chipping Norton sewage works which discharges to the Evenlode was identified in the report as spilling on 69 days between Jan 2020 and April 2021 with 26 of these spills illegal. In large part as a result of their efforts I believe there is a special plan to address pollution of the Windrush.  The Evenlode needs a WASP too.

Regarding the Environment Bill it is not clear to me that the amendments which have been or will be proposed are how this problem will be addressed.  The system cannot be changed overnight and it is probably impossible to prevent the need to discharge in extreme weather events and therefore to outlaw discharges.  As others have highlighted the reality is that there has been gross regulatory failure for many years.  As a start the Environment Agency must be compelled to punish the water companies for the permit breaches which have become commonplace and to put in place a monitoring system which actually identifies when permit conditions are breached.  Doing this will help force the water companies to invest.  Going forward the tightening of permit conditions is presumably the best way to achieve an improving outcome.  Hopefully this will be part of the strategic plan the Government is promising.