Firms spent 9m hours pumping sewage into sea
WATER companies have spent more than nine million hours pumping raw sewage into Britain’s seas and rivers since 2016.
Environment Agency figures reveal the staggering amount discharged into areas including tourist and bathing hotspots.
And the Labour Party, which obtained the data under Freedom of Information laws, last night warned that the full scale of pollution could be much worse.
Jim McMahon, Labour’s environment spokesman, accused the water giants of cutting corners to ‘pump filthy raw sewage on to our playing fields and into our waters’.
He added: ‘ Labour will put a stop to this disgraceful practice by ensuring there can be enforcement of unlimited fines, holding water company bosses legally and financially accountable for their negligence, and by toughening up regulations that currently allow the system to be abused.’
The data shows that, since 2016, raw sewage has been released into the UK’s seas and rivers for a total of 9,427,355 hours.
It also shows that there has been a 2,553 per cent increase in the number of monitored discharge hours between 2016 and 2021, with the party arguing that the situation is ‘drastically worsening’ under the Conservatives. In 2016, the Environment Agency recorded 100,533 hours’ worth of spills. By 2021, that figure had rocketed to 2,667,452.
This summer, warnings have been issued to holidaymakers to avoid 50 beaches across England and Wales because the sea has been polluted by sewage. The Safer Seas and Rivers Service, run by campaign group Surfers Against Sewage, revealed sewage had been discharged into seas at beaches in Cornwall, Devon, Sussex, Lancashire and Cumbria, among other places, and warned that bathers could be put at risk.
The most concentrated areas were across the south coast.
Water companies are allowed to release sewage into rivers and seas to prevent sewage works becoming overwhelmed during periods of heavy rain. But critics say that firms have failed to invest in better infrastructure such as storage tanks, preferring to pay dividends to shareholders and bonuses to top executives.
Earlier this month, a Daily Telegraph report suggested that official plans to reduce the level of raw sewage being discharged into waterways had been temporarily shelved.
However, the Government now appears to be sticking to the September deadline.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the Government was ‘taking action’ on sewage discharges, with the current administration being the first to set an expectation on water companies to significantly reduce discharges from storm overflows.
Water minister Steve Double said:
‘Disgraceful practice’
‘We are the first government to take action to tackle sewage overflows. We have been clear that water companies’ reliance on overflows is unacceptable and they must significantly reduce how much sewage they discharge as a priority.
‘This is on top of ambitious action we have already taken, including consulting on targets to improve water quality which will act as a powerful tool to deliver cleaner water, pushing all water companies to go further and faster to fix overflows.
‘Work on tackling sewage overflows continues at pace and we will publish our plan in line with the September 1 statutory deadline.’