Asked by: Natalie Fleet (Labour - Bolsover)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what action is being taken to ensure that monitoring at combined sewage overflow locations in Bolsover constituency is active 100 per cent of the time.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Act 2021 requires all water companies, including Severn Trent, to publish near real time Event Duration Monitoring (EDM) data for all storm overflows. EDM installation follows specifications set out in the CIWEM (Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management) Event Duration Monitoring Good Practice Guide to ensure robust data quality.
The Government has consulted on strengthening penalties for water company offences. This could include strengthened monitoring requirements and clearer enforcement mechanisms to give the Environment Agency new tools to respond where defined monitoring failures occur at overflow locations.