According to a new strategy the government unveiled today to address sewage discharges in our seas, water corporations will be subject to the harshest pollution from sewage targets ever.
According to the government’s plan, a long-term programme to address storm sewage discharges by 2050 will force them to make their largest ever investment in environmental infrastructure — a capital investment of £56 billion over 25 years.
The plan prioritises activity in very significant and delicate places, such as designated swimming areas and vital biological sites.
To preserve public health and prevent pollution while drastically reducing all emissions, they will need to implement measures like expanding the capacity of their networks and purifying sewage before it is discharged.
If they don’t reach these goals, they risk paying hefty fines or having to refund customers’ money.
The Storm Overflow Discharge Reduction Plan is the largest delivery and investment initiative water utilities have ever implemented to safeguard both people and the environment.
The strategy is the result of ongoing efforts by the government, the Environment Agency, and the regulator Ofwat to improve water companies’ performance, monitoring, and accountability. We are the first government to mandate that water companies take action to address these spills.
Included in this is a significant increase in monitoring the frequency and length of discharges, which will go from about 5% in 2016 to about 90% in 2021.
According to the plans unveiled today, water companies must meet a number of objectives to ensure that releases only take place during periods of unusually heavy rainfall and when there is no imminent threat to the surrounding environment.
By 2035, water providers must upgrade every storm overflow that discharges into or close to a designated swimming area, as well as 75% of overflows that discharge to high-priority natural areas.
This will hold true regardless of location for any storm overflows that are still included in our targets by 2050.
In 2027, we will assess this strategy again to see where we can make improvements while taking efficiency and innovation into account.
The proposal also stipulates that water suppliers must publish discharge data in almost real-time and commit to addressing the problem’s underlying causes through improving surface water drainage.
The plan also outlines our broader expectations for the water sector, ensuring that their infrastructure keeps up with mounting external challenges like urbanisation and climate change, ensuring that our water supplies are safe and secure into the future.
George Eustis, the environment secretary, declared: “This is the first administration to act to stop the environmental harm caused by sewage spills.
To ensure that storm overflows do not endanger the ecosystem, we shall mandate that water providers safeguard everyone who uses our water for recreational purposes.
Our rivers and coast lines will need to be better protected than ever before, thus water corporations will need to invest in order to stop unacceptable sewage discharges.
These strategies successfully balance the impact on consumers with the requirement for investment. No modifications to the law will be made under this approach until 2025.
Options that could have increased average household water rates by up to £817 annually have been rejected by the government.
In addition to keeping an eye on water affordability and taking further action if necessary, the government will consult on a new water affordability programme to aid less wealthy households.
Our Environment Act has also proposed a number of steps to address sewage spills, such as requiring water corporations to be more transparent about their storm overflow data.
The regulators (Environment Agency and Ofwat) last year launched the largest criminal and civil investigations into water company sewage discharges at over 2200 treatment works as a result of this government’s policies to increase monitoring and transparency, following new data that emerged as a result of increased monitoring.
The investigations will look for areas where sites may be violating their permits, and they will make sure that businesses that are found to be acting illegally are held accountable, up to and including being prosecuted, which can result in astronomical fines and the need for businesses to make up lost revenue.
This comes after 54 prosecutions of water firms since 2015 that resulted in fines totaling around £140 million.
We won’t let businesses get away with engaging in criminal conduct, and when violations are discovered, authorities won’t think twice about holding businesses accountable.
The government has also made it quite apparent that businesses cannot make money off of environmental harm.
According to Ofwat’s guidelines, water providers must be open and honest about how CEO compensation and dividends relate to customer service delivery, including environmental performance.
The government is in favour of Ofwat’s most recent proposals, which would grant more authority for enforcement action against businesses that fail to disclose their dividend payouts or fail to link dividend payments to their environmental performance.