Pollution in Rivers and Regulation of Private Water Companies

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville for tabling this very important topic for debate. She has described the consequences for our rivers of discharging raw sewage from storm overflows; the health problems that follow can be very serious, but I will start with some history.

Nearly 170 years ago, sewage was discharged into the rivers that served our great cities. In London, it was the Thames, and one hot summer in 1858 the smell that resulted from the raw effluent was dubbed the Great Stink. It affected Parliament to such an extent that the curtains were soaked in chloride of lime in a vain attempt to reduce the overpowering smell. The failure to deal with a long-running discharge of raw sewage into the Thames had literally got up the noses of MPs and Peers; something had to be done, of course, and it was.

The great Joseph Bazalgette was a civil engineer who then set to work and created the sewage system for central London, including for Parliament. Standards for sewage systems for the whole country followed in 1875, when a Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, overcame the laissez-faire attitude of his party and passed the Public Health Act, which required local authorities to create or repair sewers at significant cost to ratepayers. It is salutary to think that, over 150 years later, that investment in the sewerage infrastructure has been so neglected that, today, communities across the country face a modern equivalent of the Great Stink.

In Yorkshire, where I am happy to live, the rivers create a beautiful environment, as well as providing water for habitats and a focus for recreation but also water abstraction for domestic consumption. Sadly, too often, these great rivers are also used to carry sewage from storm overflows. I hasten to add that, despite all else that pollutes our rivers, the water companies and the Drinking Water Inspectorate ensure a very high quality of drinking water.

These are some of the more recent incidents. Over 2020 and 2021, two Yorkshire rivers, the River Nidd and the River Wharfe, received almost approximately 1.4 billion litres of untreated wastewater—for “wastewater”, read “raw sewage”. The River Nidd saw 870 sewage dump incidents in 2022, according to Environment Agency figures. Testing of water pollution in the River Nidd at the time showed that the harmful bacteria E. coli was at “concerningly high” levels.

In 2016, the Environment Agency received a report of pollution in Hookstone Beck in Harrogate. Investigating officers traced it to the nearby overflow, which had blocked. The investigation found that almost 1,500 fish had been killed and that water quality was affected for 2.5 kilometres downstream. A series of further blockages and discharges took place in the following months.

These are just some of the pollution incidents relating to the discharging of raw sewage in our great Yorkshire rivers. The question for the Minister is this: why have these pollution incidents been permitted without earlier intervention by the regulators and the Government?

The EU water framework directive has been retained by the Government as retained EU law. Prior to 2019, the water framework directive was a key driver to very significant capital investment by water companies in their wastewater treatment works and sewage systems. In Yorkshire, there were some very large schemes to improve wastewater treatment facilities and the system attached to them. The Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 only requires

“water companies to have eliminated all adverse ecological impact from sewage discharges at all sensitive sites by 2035, and at all other overflows by 2050”.

The Government are apparently satisfied that raw sewage discharges can continue for a further 25 years. What is worse is that these aims in the plan are not even legally binding.

Further, the Government’s Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan of 2022 set a target for 75% of overflows close to high-priority sites such as SSSIs and so on by 2035. This is a considerable dilution of the water framework directive, which set a date to restore all surface water bodies—rivers, streams et cetera—to good ecological status by December 2027. Yet the Government are apparently okaying 2035 for the most sensitive areas.

One hundred and fifty years ago, a Government were able to accept, first, that they had a responsibility and, secondly, that taking responsibility meant having a duty to act. The situation we suffer today is that Conservative Governments have been keen to outsource these critical responsibilities of providing clean drinking water and treating sewage so that the end-result can be discharged to rivers or the sea without causing pollution.

It is time for the Government to appreciate that discharging raw sewage into watercourses is not acceptable. It is a public health scandal. But, of course, public health is underfunded, as is the Environment Agency, to tackle these health challenges. Disraeli understood that his Government would be judged by the approach to public health. That same challenge exists today, and we are yet to see the Conservative Government rising effectively and with determination to that challenge.