Why should their owners, living in China or Australia, give a toss about the pollution of the River Wye or the Avon?

They do not care that Britain is the smelliest and filthiest country in Europe, its rivers, canals and coastal waters made putrid by the companies that make billions by charging us for services they do not fully provide.

Privatisation has proved to be a disaster, but we can’t expect the Tory government to admit that and neither can we expect the Labour Opposition, which has eschewed all renationalisation proposals in its transformation into Tory-lite, to do more than flap like a wet lettuce leaf, condemning the latest scandalous revelations, while having no plan for a solution.

The nearest labour got to a solution was Jeremy Corbyn’s fully costed re-nationalisation proposal. Starmer, in seeking the labour leadership, endorsed that proposal, but reneged on it as soon as he was elected. This is not the only example of his plain perfidy.

Our water supply and sewage infrastructure has remained largely untouched since the Victorians built it.

With population increase, new housing developments have simply been attached to the existing system, with never a thought for enlargement or renewal, and consequently it has become grossly overloaded.

In an earlier blog, I explained that the pipes for sewage and surface rainwater should be separate. Mixing sewage, which requires full treatment, with rainwater, which does not, overloads the sewage treatment plants and wastes the relatively clean rainwater.

When privatised, a regulating body was established, but it has never functioned adequately. The Environment Agency (EA)has suffered innumerable cuts and now its laboratory facilities and field staff are too diminished to keep an eye on the cowboys who run the water companies.

 

Sewage discharges are most frequent during heavy rainfall, but the latest scandal is the frequency of discharges during dry weather, when there should be no discharges at all.

A pitiful excuse is that the system becomes overloaded by ground water seeping into the pipes.  It is probable that any excess groundwater comes from the companies’ own leaking water mains.

For this latest infringement, discovered by the BBC, not OfWat or the EA, there may be a slap on the wrist. There may be a fine, which will be passed on to the companies’ customers.

The company executives will continue to receive their fat salaries and their inflated bonuses.

These cowboy executives ought to be put before the courts and the companies should be re-nationalised. Dividends should cease until the nation’s sewage and water supply infrastructure are made fit for purpose.