Two water companies don’t know where third of their sewer pipes are
TWO of Britain’s biggest water companies have failed to map a third of their sewer pipe network, it emerged yesterday.
Campaigners reacted furiously to the revelation that Thames Water and Southern Water can’t locate their pipes much less monitor pollution flowing from them into rivers.
They only map them as they work on them, Freedom of Information requests show.
Thames Water, which has 16million customers – a quarter of the UK’s population – admitted more than 30% of its network isn’t mapped. Southern Water, with 4.7m customers, put the figure at 40% and said the cost of mapping was “considered prohibitive”.
Former pop star Feargal Sharkey, who is a passionate campaigner, pointed out that ThamesWater still plan to pay its shareholders £2billion over the next 10 years.
He told the Daily Express: “What a shambles. They’ll happily blame the Victorians when dumping sewage into the environment.
“But on the very same day Thames Water
‘What a shambles. They will blame the Victorians when dumping sewage’
demanded the right to pay shareholders another £2bn of your money, they finally admit it – it wasn’t the Victorians, they don’t even know where their own sewage-filled pipes start and end.”
Campaigner Ash Smith, of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, said: “If they don’t know where the sewers are, they will also be ignorant of the age and condition of the pipes.”
Thames Water is on the brink of financial collapse after being hit by higher interest rates on its £18bn debt mountain. Southern Water is also under close watch over its financial stability by regulator Ofwat.
Both companies have been fined for pollution offences in recent years, with inadequate maintenance and investment in the sewage infrastructure blamed. They have asked the regulator to approve increases in customer bills to help finance repairs, with Southern Water asking for 74% rise that would see bills go up to £727 a year by 2029-30 before inflation. Although companies often attribute failures to theVictorian infrastructure, most of the network was replaced before privatisation.
Thames Water has the highest number of Victorian-era pipes at 20%, while at Southern it is just 8%, according to Mr Smith’s group.
Thames Water said it was not planning to pay dividends until “at least 2030. Almost 70% of the system is mapped and we continue to map assets as and when they require intervention. A study is under way looking at how technology can be utilised.”
Southern Water said: “In 2011 the government transferred 17,000km of private pipework to us. We set out to map the sewer network as and when issues arose, as the cost of physically mapping the network was considered prohibitive. We are part of a working group, along with six other water firms, to design an effective mapping approach.”