Another ft article on the sorry state of our waterways and coastal waters7 Nov 2020 14:23
I wonder when and if the government will seriously start stepping in mandating the big foreign funds which own and are reponsible for the pollution to start cleaning up their act similar to all the other green initiatives and government funding around the world pouring into the green sector?Johnson is hosting the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, and Biden is looking likely to win with his plans to spend big on green tech and issues.The water sector seems to be being left behind and ignored by policy makers right now.
'Water companies in England and Wales dumped raw sewage and storm water on to some of the nation’s most popular beaches at least 2,941 times in the past year, polluting the environment and putting people’s heath at risk, according to a charity that compiles the utilities’ data.'
'Not all of the 21,462 combined sewage overflow pipes — which release a mixture of storm water and sewage — are monitored so even water companies do not have accurate figures.'
'SAS said Southern Water told it that “notifications should have been sent but frustratingly they weren’t”. Last year the sector’s regulator, Ofwat, found that Southern had deliberately manipulated and misreported data for seven years until 2017 so that it could dump untreated effluent into waterways, highlighting the problems with relying on water company data.
This included evidence that the company routinely drove tanker loads of sewage away from problematic sites so they could avoid submitting a poor reading to the Environment Agency inspectors.'
'The data will add to growing concerns over the state of the waterways in England and Wales, with the Environment Agency confirming last month that just 16 per cent of England’s rivers, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters meet the minimum “good ecological status”, according to the EU water framework directive, down from 25 per cent a decade ago.'
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