The vexed issue of sewage overflows never fails to raise a stink
The vexed issue of sewage overflows never fails to raise a stink, and rightly so given the potential for harm to public health and the environment as well as the obvious general distaste. In our day and age, reports of raw sewage being released into our waterways appear to hark back to a bygone era, and for some this issue seeks to confirm the worst stereotypes of Conservatives. How the issue is portrayed also reflects badly on an aspect of our politics.
It recently has once again been claimed that the Tories ‘voted for sewage’ to be discharged into our rivers, so despatching some of this misinformation down the tubes may be of some help. The Government is taking active steps to address these sewage overflows, and those who are concerned about water quality can hopefully relieve themselves a little by reading this article.
There are solid reasons why these discharges take place. Much of our water infrastructure dates from Victorian times, in which combined pipes lead to rainwater merging with sewage water. During periods of heavy rainfall, or unexpectedly heavy groundwater seepage, the approximately 15,000 storm overflows in England act like a safety valve, preventing the water otherwise backing up into our homes and streets. New pipes are of course separated, but this still leaves a legacy set of combined pipes around 100,000 km in length - enough to cross the Earth two and a half times.
Stopping overflows right now would lead to sewage backing up into homes and streets, so is clearly not an option. Meanwhile, the cost of separating all surface water and wastewater pipes is estimated to cost between £338 - £593 billion. Alternatively, the cost of constructing enough additional storage to treat all the water is estimated to be between £120 - £190 billion.
However you square it, there are no cheap or quick fixes to this problem - and consumers will share the costs of these improvements through their water bills. Londoners will be aware of the Thames Tideway tunnel, which should open in 2025 after nearly ten years of construction at a cost of over £4 billion. This should almost entirely eliminate sewage overflows into the Thames.
In more recent times, these overflows have been exacerbated by a growing population and the increase in the use of impermeable surfaces, which prevent water seeping into the ground and thereby increase surface run-off into our drainage systems. On top of these developments, an increase in the general frequency and severity of rainstorms, often attributed to climate change, means there is additional pressure on our watercourses.
Another reason why sewage overflows are increasingly in the news is because we know more about them. In July 2013 Richard Benyon, then the Minister with responsibility for water, instructed water companies to monitor when, and for how long, their storm overflows operated. In 2010 only 5% of overflows were monitored against 95% today - with a target of 100% by the end of this year. There is no historical data on when overflows operated before these monitors were put in place.
In tandem with this monitoring, the Government also established the Storm Overflow Task Force, which made clear via the regulators that water companies were expected to prioritise investment in the environment and tackle sewage overflows. In 2021, during the passage of the Environment Act, I joined Conservative MPs in voting for amendments put down by the Duke of Wellington and Rt Hon Philip Dunne MP which had the aim of eliminating sewage discharges. The Government made some substantial compromises, which we accepted.
Wading deeper into this issue, last August the Government published the Sewage Overflow Reduction Plan, which commits water companies to spending £56 billion over the coming decades to tackle these overflows, in addition to investment in new anti-drought infrastructure, tackling leakages and reducing pollutants. Fines are also increasing for the water companies; since 2015 the Environment Agency has concluded 56 prosecutions, securing fines of over £141 million. The Government is also supporting Ofwat’s work to link dividends and bonuses to environmental performance for the first time.
Despite these positive steps to address sewage overflows, it is disappointing that opposition parties indulge in misrepresentation, and sometimes outright scaremongering, for their political ends. These sort of stunts reveal the worst side of our politics, and all parties would do best to avoid them. A case in point came with a set of measures passed by a deferred division on 25th January.
Stemming from the Environment Act 2021, these measures set targets for improvements to water quality across four areas: 1) a reduction of 40% in nitrogen, phosphorous and sediment pollution from agricultural land, 2) a reduction of 80% in phosphorous from treated wastewater, 3) halving the length of rivers polluted by abandoned metal mines and 4) an overall reduction in water demand by 20%. These targets work in conjunction with the other work to reduce overflows.
There is no doubt that these targets will improve water quality, yet opposition parties voted against them and in the media characterised the Government’s votes to pass them as Tories voting to dump sewage into rivers. Amplified by celebrities on social media, this story spread far and wide, and very quickly. Yet it is wholly misleading; by the same token opposition MPs could be said to have voted in favour of higher levels of pollutants in our rivers.
Hopefully the Government’s press operation and articles such as this will have helped to set the record straight. Conservatives want a cleaner and healthier environment as much as anyone, and I am pleased the Government is ready and willing to roll its sleeves up and get bogged down in the detail when necessary.
John Baron is the former Conservative MP for Basildon and Billericay and a former Shadow Health Minister.
