Compliance alone won’t save our rivers
The latest State of our Rivers report highlighted the challenges in restoring our waterways to health. Here one of the report's authors tells Utility Week what response she would like to see from water companies, and more widely.
The scale of public outrage over the sewage scandal has triggered sweeping changes for the water industry in recent years. Most notably, all known combined sewer overflows (CSOs) have had monitors installed, allowing firstly annual and then real-time data on raw sewage discharges to be made available to the public. In 2023, water companies issued a collective apology for not acting quickly enough on the issue and promised to invest £10 billion to modernise the sewerage system. As per the Environment Act, they are also required to monitor both upstream and downstream of overflows to help assess the impacts of discharges.
You could be forgiven for thinking that these changes, along with the reform of regulation and governance that we are anticipating in the upcoming Clean Water Bill, would set our rivers on the path to becoming healthy again. Sadly, as The Rivers Trust revealed in the State of Our Rivers report released earlier this month, it is not that simple. The headlines have focused on raw sewage, but even treated sewage is a problem.
Alison Matthews, chalk stream programme manager, Rivers Trust
Alison Matthews, chalk stream programme manager, Rivers Trust
The scale of public outrage over the sewage scandal has triggered sweeping changes for the water industry in recent years. Most notably, all known combined sewer overflows (CSOs) have had monitors installed, allowing firstly annual and then real-time data on raw sewage discharges to be made available to the public. In 2023, water companies issued a collective apology for not acting quickly enough on the issue and promised to invest £10 billion to modernise the sewerage system. As per the Environment Act, they are also required to monitor both upstream and downstream of overflows to help assess the impacts of discharges.
You could be forgiven for thinking that these changes, along with the reform of regulation and governance that we are anticipating in the upcoming Clean Water Bill, would set our rivers on the path to becoming healthy again. Sadly, as The Rivers Trust revealed in the State of Our Rivers report released earlier this month, it is not that simple. The headlines have focused on raw sewage, but even treated sewage is a problem.
According to the latest Water Framework Directive data, raw sewage discharges contribute to 8.7% of river stretches failing to achieve good ecological health. Treated sewage discharges, however, account for 36.8% of failures. The latest statistics are due to the Environment Agency later this year. The frequent introduction of excess nutrients, industrial chemicals, pharmaceutical compounds, microplastics, heavy metals, bacteria and pathogens into waterways through consented discharges of treated sewage – which is compliant with current water company permits - means that rivers are suffering a death by a thousand cuts.
So even if all water companies immediately stopped discharging raw sewage into rivers and complied with their permits to the letter on treated sewage, water industry activities would still be a big factor in our rivers not being up to standard. Clearly, more needs to be done to address this problem and improve river health - not just by water companies, but by government and regulators and polluting businesses.
In Europe, the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive has been tightened with European countries now working towards improved treatment standards for smaller wastewater treatment works (WWTW), a polluter-pays mechanism for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals and a focus on microplastics and chemicals. Unfortunately, the UK does not appear to be adopting the same approach and we do need to do more to improve discharges and create rivers fit for the future.
The Environment Agency issues the permits that the water companies are required to operate to, but these don’t always contain the right conditions to protect the water environment, as shown in The Rivers Trust State of Our Rivers report. A risk-based review of these permits – linked to the development of River Basin Management Plans - would identify the sites where action is needed to tighten the conditions of the permit and improve the quality of the discharges.
Water companies can take a more pro-active approach to addressing environmental concerns in their statutory Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans. A more open approach to developing investment plans and sharing data should better inform the public about the challenges they're facing and the improvements they’re making, but it will also help people and other businesses to better understand the impact of their own activities on the environment.
The scale of the challenge to deliver an environmentally sustainable wastewater system is well recognised within the water industry and there is a welcome willingness to include more innovative and nature-based solutions. To deliver these at pace and scale, we urgently need the water industry and regulators to learn from the schemes currently being developed and use that knowledge to shape future plans.
There is already a good example of how we could do things differently. In recent years, directed by the National Framework for Water Resources we have seen collaborative action at a regional scale to develop a long-term strategic approach to securing water supplies. With the prospect of new regional systems planners and a move towards devolution there is a real opportunity to explore how this type of locally-led approach could work.
All of these changes hinge on how much the water industry commits to two things: transparency and partnerships. We know that water companies are not solely responsible for the current poor state of our rivers, just as we know that they alone cannot restore rivers so they’re fit for the future. But they do have to show leadership in prioritising river health to protect the water that we all rely on and rebuild trust with customers and communities.
Monitoring CSOs and reducing sewage spills will be one of the core topics at our Wastewater Conference in Birmingham on 26 and 27 January. Find out more and secure your ticket here.
