Geography in the News: Rivers and Seas of Effluent

Pollution warnings have been in place for dozens of beaches in England and Wales for the last week after untreated sewage was discharged into the sea around the coast, by water companies claiming to be protecting homes.

The media has been awash with disgusting images of raw sewage being discharged into rivers and seas over the last week. And whilst we have often joked about the state of the sea around the UK, we have never witnessed such high levels of pollution. So what is going on and just how bad is it?

In 2020 water companies discharged sewage into English waterways over 403,000 times, up from 293,000 in 2019.

This included untreated effluent, including human waste, wet wipes and condoms.

Rivers Trust, who campaigns to protect river environments in England and Wales, said: "This is a shocking volume of untreated contaminated wastewater reaching our rivers and shows that our current approach and infrastructure, managing storm water in particular, needs a radical overhaul.“ (BBC News, 31/03/21)

Water companies have defended their actions this week - stating that it is because of the heavy rainfall this week that they have had to dump sewage, to prevent it entering peoples' homes. But for many this excuse literally won't wash - we are in the middle of the summer holidays, yet some of our most popular coastal resorts are having to warn tourists to stay away. So along with the devastating impact on the environment, the impact on the local economies dependent on tourism, will be pretty devastating too.

Many water companies are regularly breaching the rules surrounding sewage. Treatment works are only allowed to put sewage into rivers and streams when they are close to capacity, and after wet weather. This protects properties from flooding and prevents sewage from backing up into streets and homes.

Sewer overflow pipes carry untreated waste to rivers and the sea when treatment works are overwhelmed.

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Last year Southern Water were fined £90 million for deliberately dumping billions of litres of raw sewage into the sea, after admitting to nearly 7000 illegal spills, which resulted in shellfish being contaminated with e-coli. At the time the public were literally disgusted, yet a few months later Tory MPs were having to defend themselves after 256 voted with the government to reject an attempt by the House of Lords to bolster the Environment Bill.

Peers wanted to force water companies and the government to demonstrate progressive reductions in discharges of untreated sewage and make it standard for them to "take all reasonable steps" to avoid using combined sewer overflows. The House of Lords wanted to make water companies responsible for tackling pollution, and to take stricter action against water firms that dump sewage, along with the insistence on publishing annual reports about storm overflows.

However MPs removed 7 lines making water firms ‘take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows’, stating that the proposed amendment was unnecessary, and arguing that dumping sewage into open water was better than it coming into people's homes or businesses.

This was very controversial and saw MPs being named and shamed on social media for how they voted - these tweets have been doing the rounds again this weekend.

Water companies spent more than nine million hours pumping raw sewage into Britain’s seas and rivers since 2016, new data shows. According to data from the Environment Agency, water companies spent 9,427,355 hours discharging sewage between 2016 and 2021 into the sea and rivers across the UK. That figure is an increase of 2,553% over five years. In 2016, the Environment Agency recorded 100,533 hours’ worth of spills. By 2021, that figure had rocketed to 2,667,452.

Read more here - https://www.standard.co.uk/new...

Water companies have also been accused of failing to monitor sewage discharges at popular British seaside resorts. Data analysed by the Liberal Democrats found that many monitoring devices had either not been installed or do not work "90% of the time". The Lib Dems said the data showed a quarter of sewage discharges went unmonitored last year as a result of a lack of monitors or faults.

Read more here - https://www.theguardian.com/en...

And for a slightly more irreverent take on it, Mark Steel's column is as brilliant as ever...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/...