Sewage in our Rivers
Protect our Environment
The sheer quantity of raw sewage being dumped into Britain’s rivers and coastal areas is a scandal and a disgrace.
Everyone should be able to enjoy the wonderful natural beauties our country has to offer, with open green spaces and blue rivers. But the Conservatives are neglecting our natural environment and letting water companies get away with pouring millions of tonnes of sewage into our rivers.
In the last two years, across England and Wales, there have been almost a million sewage discharges, lasting more than 7 million hours in total. Meanwhile, the top water company executives took home £51 million in remuneration, including more than £30 million in bonuses.
Conservative MPs have utterly failed to stand up for their constituents and put a stop to this.
They have ignored the Liberal Democrat calls for a sewage tax and a ban on bonuses for the bosses responsible. They even voted against tougher action on sewage dumping, and the Government plans to let it continue until 2050.
And Ofwat – the water regulator – has become the powerless accomplice in the Conservatives’ environmental crimes.
It has given six of the eleven water companies a passing grade on pollution, even as they continue pouring sewage into our rivers. Ofwat labels three companies “top performers”, even though they are responsible for more than 2.6 million hours of sewage dumps in the last two years.
That has to change. So the Liberal Democrats are calling for Ofwat to be abolished and replaced with a tough new independent regulator with real powers to protect our beaches and rivers from sewage dumps.
Our new regulator would force water companies to clean up the mess they’re making by investing their profits in fixing our sewage system and reducing leaks. It would have the power to hand out unlimited fines and, if necessary, to prosecute companies who fail to meet these legal duties.
It’s time for the Government to stop ignoring the sewage scandal and start taking real action to clean up our rivers.
Climate Change: A Melton Times Article by our columnist Hamish McAuley
What a winter we’ve had… and its only early in the new year! With the highest winds for 20 years recorded from Storm Isha, just weeks after recovering from the unprecedented rain and flooding during Storm Henk the real-world effects of climate change for the British Isles might be starting to show. For me, this raises two subjects; first the big one – what are we doing about climate change? Now, this is clearly too big for me or even everyone in Britain to tackle, it is a truly existential human problem and will probably only be solved by an appropriately grand response.
The second subject though, is more manageable - what are we doing in the UK and locally in Melton to reduce the impact of a changing climate? By the looks of things, not enough. The flooding in early January didn’t come without warning, I’ve seen flooding along the Wreak valley at least every year since I moved here and I can find no evidence on the Environment Agency website of any large-scale work to mitigate the risk of future floods despite clear modelling showing a high probability of increased and more persistent rain in the coming years. Perhaps morally worse than not doing anything to prevent future flooding is the planning system which has demonstrably allowed development resulting in increased and more frequent flooding due to increasing surface run-off in key locations as well as development on flood plains. Although the much-discussed problems of sewage dumping may seem unrelated here, it is another symptom of the same underlying problem of underinvestment in our drainage infrastructure.
Last week the UK Government Office for Environmental Protection published a timely report titled “Progress in improving the natural environment in England, 2021/2022.” Its available on their website and well worth a read thought the findings are pretty damning. They state that they found no evidence that any government environmental improvement targets were being met and highlight the poor progress towards climate change mitigation. A particularly poignant concern for those of us who enjoy living in a rural area is the “deeply concerning” trends seen in biodiversity. A key thread that comes out the report is the interwoven nature and overlapping effects of policy and changes in the environment with apparently unconnected subjects like biodiversity and flooding actually being two sides of the same problem.
The report is also much more that a doom and gloom listing of failings and problems (though they detail a lot of these), it provides a vision and road map for how we can change course from where we are and sets out a structure for a new Environmental Improvement Plan to replace failed policies. Here, the authors highlight the need not just for vision and ambition but for clear deliverable targets and outcomes as well as wider engagement across society.
For us, as individuals, I think we should let this message sink in and consider its implications – what can we do? For many of us the first thought is to change how we live, travel and eat, and this is probably a good start. But in particular this year the UK is going to have a general election that offers each one of us the opportunity express our priorities. This doesn’t start at the ballot box, none of the main parties have yet published a manifesto and all of them are trying to work out how convince you to vote for them. If environmental improvement is highlighted by us now it will be given more priority by whoever wins the next election. I can only speak for the Liberal Democrats who have environmentalism as one of our 7 core values and who will be putting these issues at the top of our policy priorities. I’ll leave you to decide if the other parties are offering enough.
