Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of recent flooding on areas with historical levels of lead contamination.

The impact of flooding on areas of land with historical levels of lead contamination is a matter for local councils to consider under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. Local councils have the duty to inspect their areas to identify contaminated land including land contaminated by lead. In the context of flooding, this would cover situations where lead is washed from rivers or sediments onto floodplains or existing lead contamination on land is impacted by flooding.

The Environment Agency (EA) does have a role in tackling water pollution, including pollution from metals. Discharges from abandoned metal mines are one the main sources of metals in our rivers, polluting around 1,500kms (around 3% of English Rivers). In 2023, a target was set to reduce the length of rivers polluted by metals from abandoned metal mines by half by 2038. Lead is one of the 6 target metals. The EA are working with the Coal Authority under Defra’s Water and Abandoned Metal Mines (WAMM) Programme to identify and tackle the priority discharges.

So far 140 tonnes of target metals have been prevented from entering rivers through diffuse interventions and treatment schemes, but a 10-fold increase will be required in the WAMM Programme to meet the statutory target by 2038.