Water companies will clean up their acts given time
Utility firms stand accused of flushing millions of gallons of raw sewage into our waterways, poisoning wildlife and polluting beauty spots. Amid a welter of criticism, they’re now pledging to clean up their act... Here, one water company boss jumps to th
IAM proud to call the South West my home. It’s also where I work as CEO of Pennon Group – the owner of South West Water, Bournemouth Water and Bristol Water. My priority is to ensure there is an uninterrupted water supply with high-quality drinking water and effective waste water services.
That means when one of our 3.5 million customers turns on a tap, or flushes the loo, from Bristol to Bournemouth, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Sicily, it works.
In the summer months our services scale up to supply 10 million customers who flock to the South West for the 860 miles of coastline and 150 bathing beaches.
Running a water company is effectively running a water recycling system. And we are facing significant environmental challenges. Water supply is under growing pressure.
While 92 per cent of our water comes from the region’s rivers and reservoirs, with the hottest, driest weather on record last year, we are seeing the impact of climate change, intensified by population increase and tourism. For the first time in 25 years, we had to implement our drought plan.
We are doing everything possible to manage our resources, fixing around 2,000 leaks a month. Through direct investment of £75million, we’ve been able create “mini” reservoirs by repurposing disused quarries and mines and investing in technologies like desalination.
When we took over ownership 30 years ago, nearly half of all sewage in the South West was untreated and discharged directly into the sea. Only 28 per cent of beaches passed the most stringent tests.
We were called “the dirty man of Europe” and rightly so.
Fast forward to today, and by investing more than £13billion through upgrades, all sewage is now treated. For the second year running, we have achieved 100 per cent bathing water quality.
But I know that there is still work to be done.
Like all UK water companies, we’ve relied on storm overflows designed to prevent sewage filling our streets and houses. These can result in raw sewage flowing into our rivers and seas.
It is wrong and it must stop. We think storm overflows should be re-designed.They risk bathing and river water quality. Equally, there will be more investment to come and we are empowering customers and communities to work with us to plan our next phase of improvements and investments.
But we’re different from others in the sector; we have 80,000 customer shareholders, four times the number of institutional investors.
THANKS to our Watershare+ scheme, one in 14 households in the South West has chosen to take a stake in their water company. This allows us to think long-term and keep bills as low as possible.
I know there is criticism of water companies paying out dividends, but we see it like buying a home that needs work.
In addition to a deposit and money to finance the renovations, you will almost certainly have a mortgage. The regular return through dividends we make to our shareholders gives them confidence and allows us to invest more.
Those payments are modest, equivalent to the interest rate an average family would get on their bank savings.
We can’t make a difference on our own. Our 3,100 employees are committed to the community in which we operate.
I firmly believe that if we support our communities, they will support us.
Last year we saw this in Cornwall, as people came together to preserve reservoir levels with our “Stop the Drop” campaign.
Around 93 per cent of sewer blockages are caused by wet wipes being flushed down the lavatory, which costs around £100million a year to clear up across the country.
In the South West, my brilliant team removes around half a million tonnes of un-flushable items like wet wipes from our sewers – the equivalent of around 30 double decker buses.
We can all think before we flush. And that will mean we spend our time focused on the areas that need improvement.
My goal is to guarantee the provision of high-quality water for all and for the water in our rivers and sea to be clean. Always.We’re not there yet but we’re on our way.
‘By investing more than £13bn, all sewage is now treated’