Neighbours Postcode Lottery win Campaigners call for urgent action to clean up the harbour
Organisations and residents are calling for urgent action to overcome years of underinvestment in local infrastructure amid unprecedented drainage problems.
While campaigners welcomed Southern Water’s latest management plan, critics claimed that it was “too little, too late” and will take decades before things improve.
An online meeting on the water problems in the Chichester area last week was attended by representatives from Southern Water, the Environment Agency, the RSPB, Natural England, and local MP Gillian Keegan.
“Why has it taken so long to recognise the serious issue facing our natural environment and residents, who have been dealing with toilets backing up for years?” said Libby Alexander, founder of Save our South Coast Alliance (SOSCA).
“We welcome Southern Water’s long overdue investment plans as they attempt to play catch up,” said Robert Bailey, co-founder of the Clean Harbours Partnership, a campaign group formed in response to local concern about pollution in Chichester and Langstone Harbour.
He, along with other campaigners, pointed out that it has taken years of effort by many residents and groups to get to this point.
“It’s good news that SW have had their arm twisted. However, it is bad news that we will be paying for it again and with treatment Regulations based in the last century. We remain concerned that a cocktail of modern chemicals will still be flowing into our harbour waters,” said Mr Bailey.
“We appreciated the time given by the panel but felt that we heard a lot of good words but very little in terms of time scales,” said Joan Foster of the Manhood Peninsula Action Group.
Many campaigners question whether the privatisation of the water companies in 1989 has benefitted the public. “Ms Keegan claims that the government has ploughed millions into infrastructure upgrades, but wasn’t privatisation supposed to have achieved that?” asked
Ms Alexander.
“England and Wales are virtually the only countries in the world who have privatised their water and sewage industry. One might ask why that is,” said resident Keith Meadmore, noting that dividends totalling £72 billion have been paid out to shareholders to date while the water companies have huge debts and lack capacity to cope.
“This plan remains too little and too late,” said Mr Meadmore, explaining that Southern Water aims to reduce the number of spills but does not specify anything about volumes discharged, as a result “we are likely to see less spills but for longer periods.”
Meanwhile, “any location with fewer than 10 spills per annum is out of scope until after 2030 according to the plan,’ he pointed out.
A spokesperson for Hayling Sewage Watch agreed pointing out that “the regulators requesting minute based EDM data instead of volumetric data seem to lack a basic understanding of environmental impact. It’s the volume of pollution that poses the problem here, not the duration or frequency of its occurrence.”