Water firms to face more sewage dumping tracking from environment watchdog
Sewage-dumping water companies will be monitored more closely through the roll-out of more detection systems.
The Environment Agency today said that from next year, utility providers in England and Wales will be required to fit monitors on an additional 7,000 emergency overflow pipes that have to date not been accounted for.
These pipes differ from regular combined sewage overflow pipes which are only meant to release sewage during extreme rainfall to prevent flood risks.
Emergency overflow pipes operate only in urgent circumstances such as mechanical failures like power failures and outages, situations out of the control of the water companies.
Helen Wakeham, Environment Agency director of water, said: “We want complete transparency on discharges of sewage to our water environment.
“As we transform the way we regulate the industry, this high level of transparency is critical. It lifts the lid on how our networks are performing and drives the improvements from the industry that are clearly needed.”
Water providers have been required to monitor the duration of sewage spillages since 2015. The UK’s largest water provider, Thames Water, runs a live map of sewage discharge.
Just 16 per cent of waterways in England and Wales meet minimum EU standards for ecological status and none meet the standards for chemicals, according to EA data.
Additionally, recent findings from the UK River Trust show that zero per cent of the country’s rivers fall into either ‘good’ or ‘high’ overall status and 23 per cent are classified as ‘poor’ or ‘bad.’
Since the last report was published in 2021, just 151 out of 3,553 English river stretches (2.3 per cent) have improved their ecological status, while 158 worsened.
Though many providers blame weather patterns for increasing numbers of waste discharged into water bodies, Imperial College London last year published a study showing that the problem likely stemmed from infrastructure failures.
Currently, the discourse around UK water companies has centred around embattled provider Thames Water, which serves around 16m customers.
Late last week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak brought his special adviser on business and investment, former Morgan Stanley executive Franck Petitgas, into discussions on the firm, which is facing an £18bn-and-rising debt pile.
In the company’s industry-mandated service commitment published earlier this year, the firm pushed up its leakage forecasts for this year from 550m litres a day to 585m and between 512m and 530m litres next year – up from the 507m previously forecast.