THE MUCKIEST COUNTRY IN EUROPE

THANKS TO SUCCESSIVE TORY GOVERNMENTS, WE HAVE THE FILTHIEST RIVERS AND BEACHES IN EUROPE.

WILD SWIMMING, FISHING AND CANOEING  HAVE BECOME DANGEROUS PURSUITS. BRITAIN  IS THE MOST WILDLIFE-DEPRIVED COUNTRY IN THE WORLD AND IT IS GETTING WORSE.

 

The Environment Agency (EA) should be a watchdog, with teeth, protecting our environmental standards, but its staffing and powers have been cut to the bone during the long period of unnecessary and devastating austerity occasioned by the 2008-9 housing market collapse in the USA. It was the usual story: America sneezed and Britain caught pneumonia.

 

For several years, we were afforded some protection by EU laws and regulations. But no longer.

The Tories won the EU membership referendum with the slogan, “Bring back control”. Control of what and control by whom was never made clear. Of late, the manic Brexiteers in the government have been spending a lot of energy in cancelling laws and regulations remaining from our EU membership. Foremost on their list have been   EU directives concerning the environment.

 

Brexit, we were told, would bring the NHS an extra £350 million a week.  This was another of Johnson’s blatant lies. Brexit would bring an end to immigration we were assured.  It certainly reduced immigration from other EU countries, at considerable cost to our economy. But immigration from other parts of the world has increased enormously, largely thanks to our involvement in Blair’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as our gross interference in the affairs of Libya and Syria.

 

Brexit has brought none of the promised benefits, but it has resulted in  damage to our economy and to our environment.

 

The EA used to have a target for annual inspections of sewage works. Due to its depleted resources, it no longer has such an inspection target, leaving the sewage companies to do as they please. As a consequence, river and sea pollution are now worse than at any time since the middle of the 19th century.

 

Our water supply and sewerage companies are largely foreign owned. Why should a Chinese magnate care about pollution here, knowing that the remedy would entail investment that would reduce his dividends?

 

The income from at least half of water company customers in England goes into the coffers of Chinese corporations.

Of the nine water and sewage companies in England, three are  wholly or partially owned by  China, including the biggest companies, Thames Water and Yorkshire water.   The proceeds of the industry, instead of boosting Britain’s tax-take and providing for the major infrastructure investment which is so sorely needed, are snatched abroad by the Chinese State and dubious regimes such as Dubai.

 

It is ironic that water and sewage is privatised here, but benefit state-owned enterprises abroad.

 

The River Darent

 

For many years I was familiar with the stretch of the River Darent that flows through Lullingstone Country Park and Eynsford. It is one of the chalk streams that flow through the southern counties.

Our chalk streams used to be a rare and exceptionally biodiverse habitat. Not any longer. Our chalk streams remain a rare habitat,  but no longer rich in wildlife, thanks to the water companies that have devastated them. That part  of the darent used to have long stretches of water crowfoot (Ranunclus aquatilis) closely related to the buttercup. Its white flowers decorated the surface of the river and its dense growth of stems and leaves made the water richly oxygenated, so that it supported an abundance of animal life, including brown trout and crayfish. Not any longer. Thames water finds it convenient to release sewage overflows into the river. It also withdraws water for domestic supplies.

Thames water excessively pumps water from the aquifer under the Darent’s catchment area, which is rather like leaving the plug out of your bath, even when running water into it.

The national rivers authority considers the darent to be the most over- abstracted river in the southern counties. The darent is being ruined by having too much water abstracted and having sewage emptied into its smaller volume.

 

At times of heavy rainfall, many sewage facilities have not the capacity to store and fully treat the increased volume of water. Our decrepit drainage and sewage infrastructure has not been modernised since being built over 150 years ago.  The system should keep surface rainwater and sewage water separate. The former would require little or no treatment before being released into rivers or coastal waters, whereas the latter requires full cleansing and purification treatment before it can be released. Allowing these two kinds of drainage to mix is grossly inefficient and wasteful.
when the water utilities were publicly owned there was too little investment in modernisation. When privatisation took place, in 1989, 80 per cent of people were opposed to the move.  When, in 2017, Jeremy Corbyn proposed returning the utilities to public ownership, after 25 years’ experience of privatisation, 83 per cent of the public supported the proposition.

 

With the EA now a toothless organisation, the government assumes the companies will honestly own up to sewage overflows into rivers, canals and coastal waters.  This is a barmy idea and nothing but government on the cheap.  The companies have demonstrated again and  again that they cannot be trusted. They fail to report pollution incidents and when challenged, they are prepared to lie. We have had even Tory politicians demanding that company executives should be held personally responsible for pollution incidents and be liable to imprisonment.  The Tory government will not allow that. Instead it tolerates the company executives being on  obscenely high salaries and also raking in share issues and fat bonuses.

Our rivers and coastal waters are now the foulest in Europe and the government has given the companies until 2050 to tackle the problem. The companies are raking in fat profits and paying out big dividends. They have the money and should be forced to invest in major clean-up projects NOW, before paying millions to share-holders.

The government has recently appointed to its council for Sustainable Business  (CSB)( the body that advises government on water , waste disposal and biodiversity) one, Clive Lewis MP, who has already proved to be no more than ornament on the Environmental Audit Committee. The chairwoman of the CSB is Liv Garfield,  Chief Executive of Severn Trent water, for which she picks up £4 million a year. Severn Trent is just about the worst of the water companies for polluting our environment and yet she is selected by the government to lead the CSB. There could hardly be a worse choice.

I wish I had the magic power to tip raw sewage into the bathwater of every water company executive.

 

Scotland has a publicly owned water and sewage company, Scottish Water. It has 3,614 installations where mixed water overflows can take place, but only 4 per cent are monitored. Scottish Water has released data indicating that between 2017 and 2021 there were polluting overflows into rivers, lochs and coastal waters thirty times each day.There are probably hundreds of foul discharges  each year, but neither the company, nor the public know the precise figure and, more importantly, the public is never informed when discharges take place  in their vicinity, rendering swimming, boating and fishing dangerous.

In contrast to Scotland’s 4 per cent of monitored discharge points which are monitored, England’s comparable figure is 89 per cent, but we cannot be certain that discharges are always reported and we cannot be certain that the volume of each discharge is honestly reported.

 

The water companies’ excuse is that heavy rainfall causes the mix of rainwater and foul water to exceed their capaciuty to store it and treat it and so street drains and domestic drains would back-up. The pressure on the ststem has to be relieved by releasing the mix of waters into rivers and on to beaches.

 

The government lamely accepts that this is inevitable. It is inevitable only because the cash-starved system harks back to the mid-19th century. Other countries are able to keep  foul water (sewage), grey water (water from sinks, baths and washing machines) separate