THREAD: Next week, Southern Water – who control water supply and treatment across the southeast of England – are being taken to court after pleading guilty to dumping “poisonous, noxious” substances, including untreated sewage, into rivers and coastal waters between 2010 – 2015.

As far as it is known, these amounted to around 8,400 incidents – meaning that Southern dumped sewage into rivers and coastal waters for an average of four to five times a day across the southeast, every day, for five years. Around half these incidents lasted longer than an hour.

For context, so-called Combined Sewer Overflows are supposedly permitted only in exceptional circumstances. In a normal year we might expect to see 12 such events. But it is common practice for water companies to vastly exceed this number, after minimal or even no rainfall.

Last year, it is thought there were 1.5 million hours of sewage released into England’s rivers.

Unlike coastal waters rivers are not regulated for bathing. This means we don’t have a warning system for when sewage has been released. The lack of river regulation also means sewage works are not required to remove contaminants they’re required to remove for coastal discharges.

An investigation is underway into Southern Water’s activities since 2015. We don’t know the full picture, but we can guess: last year Southern were fined £126 million for misreporting discharges and obstructing oversight by the Environment Agency.

During the case it was revealed that scientists were instructed by company lawyers to refuse handing vital documents to the EA. Another worker was told to lock documents in a van. All the information we have available suggests sewage discharges remain frequent and widespread.

Pollution is not Southern Water’s only failing. Around 88 million litres of water are lost per day from the pipes in their network – enough to fill over 35 Olympic sized swimming pools. Every single day. Let that number ‘sink in’ for a moment.

Meanwhile, Southern Water has made huge profits – paying out £622 million to its shareholders between 2013 and 2017 alone. In 2018, its CEO, Ian McAulay was paid over £1 million in salary.

If this seems like a reward for failure, that is because we imagine pollution and wastage to be relevant factors. They’re not – shareholder profit is all that matters. Since privatisation in 1989, water companies have handed an average of £2bn to shareholders every single year.

Water companies extract a monopoly rent from us: we have no choice but to pay, and no choice who to pay. Rather than improve infrastructure, reduce water loss and sewage overflow, our money is used to cover huge dividends for their shareholders, and salaries for their executives.

Our reward is that raw effluent is dumped into the rivers we swim in, and the beaches where we holiday.

It’s clear that relying on our regulatory bodies is not going to be enough. We need our water system to stop being treated as a device for extracting shareholder profits from consumers who have nowhere else to go.

We need tighter regulation, grassroots networks to monitor and push for enforcement, and new Rights for Nature which recognise our rivers as entities with rights which transcend mere utility.

What can we do? Well a start might to be to sign @sascampaigns petition to end sewage pollution in our rivers and seas: http://www.sas.org.uk/endsewagepollution

Or, you could join events like @theriverstrust ‘Waterblitz’ to help assess the water quality of a river near you: http://www.theriverstrust.org/2020/07/17/the-bristol-avon-waterblitz-is-back

Even better, become a guardian of your local river. Form your own ‘Friends of The River’ society to regularly monitor pollutants, campaign, and act for its revival.

As we establish and build this year, we will be campaigning for recognition of the Rights of Rivers and supporting all those who act in their defence. Stay tuned.