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The dirty truth about the nation's rivers

River pollution
River pollution

The River Loddon, which winds through the Duke of Wellington’s Hampshire country estate, is a bucolic vision of the perfect English river. Fronds of river crowfoot swirl in the gin-clear water bubbling up through underground chalk aquifers. Brown trout cruise between the shallow pools in pursuit of hatching flies, while kingfishers dart along the river bank.

But under the surface, something is amiss. According to the latest Environment Agency data published last year, every single English river – the Loddon included – failed to meet quality tests for pollution, while only 14 per cent achieved “good ecological standard”.

The stark decline in water quality nationwide is blamed on agricultural and industrial run-off into rivers and pollution by raw sewage discharges from water companies. There were 403,171 such spills of sewage into England’s rivers and seas in 2020, totalling more than 3.1 million hours of spillages.

Imbued, presumably, by a love of his local river, the Duke of Wellington has tabled an amendment to the Government’s flagship Environment Bill in the House of Lords, prompting a national debate into how we treat our rivers.

The crossbench peer’s amendment, which has been welcomed by campaigners, is calling for a legal duty to be placed on water companies not to pump untreated sewage into rivers. Initially the Government voted it down (despite 22 Conservative MPs rebelling), arguing that the complete elimination of river discharges would require a total overhaul of our sewer network costing anywhere between £150 billion and £650 billion, but late on Tuesday, ministers introduced a new amendment remarkably similar to that originally put forward by the Duke, ensuring a legal duty on water companies to “secure a progressive reduction in the adverse impacts of discharges from storm overflows”.

Amid the U-turn, the debate rages on. On Tuesday the trade body Water UK warned that any increased curbs on its members would inevitably lead to higher bills falling on the taxpayer, further fuelling the cost of living crisis. Campaigners say such figures are “scaremongering”, while MPs who voted down the earlier amendment have claimed it would lead to sewage running down the streets.

Forget the nation’s sewers; a veritable fatberg is forming in the body politic – but can we do anything to clean up our rivers?

The case for the prosecution has been made most eloquently in recent days by campaigner Feargal Sharkey. The 63-year-old former lead singer of punk band the Undertones has become one of Britain’s most prominent river campaigners. Vice-president of the charity Salmon and Trout Conservation and chairman of Hertfordshire’s Amwell Magna Fishery (the oldest angling club in the country, which this year celebrates its 180th anniversary), Sharkey describes the Government’s inaction on rivers as an act of “global hypocrisy” with the Cop26 climate talks convening in Glasgow this Sunday.

“We are about to lecture the rest of the world about climate change, yet here we are committing ecocide in our own back yard,” he says.

A few years ago, Sharkey, who developed a passion for fly fishing in his youth, decided to walk the length of every tributary of the Thames in London, looking for evidence of native brown trout.

Aside from the River Wandle in south London, he says, every other river appeared devoid of life, due to pollution. “There was a pervasive smell of sewage, and used sanitary pads, condoms and wet wipes hanging like demonic Christmas baubles off the vegetation,” he recalls.

The vast majority of Britain’s wastewater systems were built in the 19th century and designed to accommodate far fewer of us. London’s sewer system, for example, was intended for four million people, which is less than half its current population. With the system already stretched to capacity, the UK’s population is expected to grow by a further five million by 2040.

Each day in the UK, a network of roughly 350,000km collects 11 billion litres of waste water (approximately 150 litres per person). By 2040, that will rise to an additional 1.4 billion litres.

Effluent contaminated with chemicals from buried waste, draining into the River Thame, West Midlands - Corbis RF Stills
Effluent contaminated with chemicals from buried waste, draining into the River Thame, West Midlands - Corbis RF Stills

Typically, waste water is treated at sewage treatment works before being discharged into rivers, estuaries and the sea. But the Environment Agency also permits water utilities to release untreated sewage into rivers and streams in “exceptional circumstances”, after extreme weather events such as prolonged heavy rain. Only last month, wastewater plants were given permission by the Government to dispose of not fully treated sewage because of a shortage of chemicals resulting from a lack of HGV drivers.

Campaigners argue water companies are taking advantage of the lax regulation to maximise profit over increasing capacity. According to one recent analysis, England’s water companies have handed on average £2 billion a year to shareholders since they were privatised 30 years ago (roughly half what they have spent on maintenance and improvement work over the same period).

Water companies are required to submit five-year business plans to industry regulator Ofwat, which approves or rejects them. These cover big issues such as how much they will charge consumers, how much they plan to invest in upgrading infrastructure and what return they will receive in the form of profits.

Warning signs along the seafront in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, advising people not to enter the water following a sewage leak - Shutterstock
Warning signs along the seafront in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, advising people not to enter the water following a sewage leak - Shutterstock

Last year, in response to public outcry over excessive profits and dumping of raw sewage in rivers, Ofwat sought to impose a tougher settlement on water firms for 2020-25 that called for lower prices and more investment. However, water companies successfully appealed to the Competition and Markets Authority, which provisionally ruled that the firms should be able to bill customers for higher spending and that investors were entitled to higher returns. A final decision is due in December.

Simon Tait, professor in water engineering at Sheffield University, argues that blaming our current predicament on the water companies alone fails to take into account the complexities of the situation. A wholesale overhaul of our sewage system, he adds, would be ruinously expensive.

Instead, he emphasises making our current system more efficient; urging water companies to better maintain pinch points in the network and perhaps disconnecting some highway drains from flowing into combined sewers. He also argues there should be greater investment in sustainable urban drainage, like Sheffield’s award-winning flood prevention Grey to Green scheme – although he warns that even these can prove extremely costly in prime city centre sites.

Professor Martin Tillotson, chair in water management at Leeds University, who previously worked in the water industry for Yorkshire Water, agrees. “I do have a degree of sympathy with the water companies,” he says. “But that isn’t to say more could and should be done.”

An employee walks through the main tunnel at the Thames Tideway Tunnel super sewer construction project - Bloomberg
An employee walks through the main tunnel at the Thames Tideway Tunnel super sewer construction project - Bloomberg

Money is being spent, but several major ongoing projects illustrate the difficulties of modernising the network. The most high-profile addition is the £4.1 billion, 15.5-mile ‘super sewer’ being built under the Thames aka the Thames Tideway Tunnel. Costs have risen by £233 million since the scheme started, and so far the project has been delayed by nine months, meaning it is set to be handed over to London’s water supplier Thames Water in 2025.

Delays have also dogged Bristol’s new £55 million relief sewer, although other cities have completed work which has led to improvements in water quality. In 2016, Princess Anne opened a new £200 million waste water plant on the banks of the River Mersey in Liverpool, which was once declared one of the dirtiest waterways in Europe. The Rivers Trust says the Mersey has since shown improvement in water quality, with wildlife returning.

There has also been recent work developing natural land-management solutions. One such project, at the River Ingol chalk stream in East Anglia, created a series of wetlands filled with 25,000 native plants to naturally filter waste water, removing harmful chemicals such as ammonia and phosphates, before flowing into the river, leading to a dramatic improvement in water quality.

For Tillotson, the crisis in our rivers is something that can be rectified but requires multi-faceted actions, from restoring river catchments to stopping people in urban areas paving over their front gardens, to enable better drainage.

There are solutions to be found, despite the acrimony of recent days. Plus, he adds, “while at the forefront of the political agenda, it presents an opportunity for change”.

Additional reporting by Matt Oliver


What do you think needs to be done to clean up our rivers? Let us know in the comment section below