Comedian Steve Coogan demands water company cleans up its act
Steve Coogan has accused United Utilities of greenwashing and PR spin as he criticised the company for putting sewage into Lake Windermere.
The I’m Alan Partridge star joined a protest outside the North West water company’s offices near the lake as he called on the Government to compel them to clean up England’s largest lake rather than pay huge dividends to shareholders.
He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “United Utilities have a big PR machine and they put nice fancy offices up like this and say we’re working together with the people of Windermere but it’s all a smokescreen to distract attention from what they’ve been doing over the past 30 years, which is putting treated and untreated sewage into Lake Windermere.
“It’s to such an extent that there are toxic levels of algae, there are algae blooms that show the nitrate levels are like through the roof. And they’ve been doing this year on year.
“They have been paying out record dividends to shareholders, there’s no excuse for this.
“We’re telling them to stop putting sewage in the lake and take out what they put in.”
Coogan said the company should not be allowed to pass on the cost of cleaning up to the lake to billpayers but rather should deny their shareholders a dividend for a few years. He said: “Either they need to do it themselves, which I doubt they will because they are powerless to their shareholders or the Government needs to act.”
Chris Matthews, of United Utilities, told the programme: “We share the concerns that Steve has expressed there, and many other people, about the overflow operations and the impact on local water courses and are investing to tackle this problem.
“We are investing to tackle this problem here at Windermere, we’ve spent £75 million on our wastewater treatment to halve the amount of phosphorus that goes into the lake.”