What do you think?
Can a post office really take the place of our local banks? Join the debate by emailing letters@westerndailypress.co.uk and including your name and address
discharges last year alone.
Only 14% of our rivers meet good ecological standards, and the UK has a worse record for bathing water quality than every EU country.
Action is clearly needed. Ending sewage pollution from our sewerage system will take time, money and planning, but a new legal duty would make the privatised water industry treat the issue much more seriously, requiring them to take reasonable and practical action to progressively eliminate sewage pollution.
In the debate our MP remained silent, but several Conservative, Labour, Green and Lib Dem MPs argued strongly for a legal duty. Government Ministers argued it was ‘unnecessary’ given the halfmeasures they were agreeing to (more targets, plans, monitoring and reporting), and told their MPs to vote down the legal duty.
Most did, but 22 Tory MPs voted with the opposition. The Government has since been accused of looking after water companies’ profits rather than the nation’s water quality.
Unlike many of our rivers, it is crystal clear that our Conservative MP has voted to stop water companies having a legal duty to stop polluting British rivers and coasts with sewage, despite clearly promising that he would support such a law. He needs to apologise to the Friends of the River Frome and everyone else who wants to end sewage pollution.
What can you do? Please support the campaigns to end sewage pollution by Surfers Against Sewage, the Rivers Trust, the Friends of the
River Frome and others. As the issue is likely to come back to the Commons again shortly, please politely write to your MP and let him know what you think – he may have another chance to do the right thing and keep his promise next time. Adam Boyden, Damon Hooton, Richard Pinnock, Janine Nash, Drew Gardner, Helen SprawsonWhite and Barry O’Leary Mendip District Councillors
(Liberal Democrats)