Water utility companies routinely discharge untreated sewage into our rivers. This has devastating ecological consequences and adverse effects on human health. Privatised water companies have invested little in improving outdated sewerage systems; rather they have been paying out an average of £1.8 bn per year in dividends to their shareholders and in executive bonuses. Their Sewage Treatment Stations hold Environmental Agency permits to discharge untreated sewage into rivers after exceptional rainstorms in order to protect their inadequate sewer systems to overflow. However, it is left to the discretion of Sewage Treatment Stations (STSs) to decide, how often the discharges are made, meaning that they can do so with near impunity. Discharging raw sewage into rivers has become profitable! As a consequence, English rivers and streams have some of the worst water quality in Europe. It is a national scandal!

Locally in the Evenlode Valley, Thames Water Utilities (TWU) are no exception. The company has a long history of lavish dividends and bonus pay-outs, corporate tax avoidance, along with underinvestment in its infrastructure. Moreover, in recent years, together with local authorities, TWU have been approving building of hundreds of new houses in the area without plans for any appropriate infrastructure improvements. Eleven STSs owned by TWU: Moreton in Marsh, Little Compton, Broadwell, Chipping Norton, Bledington, Milton under Wychwood, Kingham the Mills, Chadligton, Charlbury, Finstock, Combe, and Church Hanborough, discharge huge volumes of raw sewage into the Evenlode and its tributaries. They all have EA permits. According to the Rivers Trust charity, based on TWU’s own monitoring data, spillages of up to 141 times a year have been recorded; in total raw sewage was being dumped into Evenlode river system for 8710 hrs in 2020.

With ever increasing frequency and severity of rainstorms due to climate change and a large increase in local population, the situation will only get worse. Yet, the recent environmental bill failed to impose a legal duty on water companies to stop discharging raw sewage into rivers asking them merely to “secure a progressive reduction in the adverse impact of discharges…on the environment …and on public health”. But a strategy on how to deliver this progressive reduction is nowhere to be seen. Therefore, polluting rivers with sewage has become legal as long as the company shows that they are doing ‘something’ to reduce it.
 
It is time for local action! The communities close to the Evenlode river demand that TWU urgently produce and publish a timeline strategy for serious improvements to its sewerage systems infrastructure and appropriate capacity enhancements. They also demand that WODC embarks on the path of stringent scrutiny, that would not allow new housing developments in areas of inadequate sewer systems or in the absence of plans for their expansion.
Moreover, a live alert system advising local communities on every single event of raw sewage discharge needs to be established and made available to residents either online or through a specific ‘TWU river sewage discharge’ app. The communities will no longer tolerate reckless and disgraceful TWU practices.
Urgent action is demanded!!!
 
Dr Lidia Arciszewska, Church Hanborough resident.
Data source: https://www.theriverstrust.org/key-issues/sewage-in-rivers