The Government is due to be presented with evidence that unlawful discharge of raw sewage into rivers is at least 10 times greater than Environment Agency prosecutions suggest, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper.

The research findings will be presented to the Environment Minister, Rebecca Pow this week by Professor Peter Hammond, visiting professor at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

The newspaper report says he will tell the Minister that “weak regulation, underreporting by water companies of potentially illegal discharges and a failure to hold companies to account mean there has been unchecked dumping of untreated sewage which would have resulted in ecological damage.”

Professor Hammond has already submitted written evidence to Parliament earlier this year based on an analysis of data gathered over 3 years via Environment Information Requests (EIRs) for 2009-2021 covering 100 sewage treatment works (STWs) in detail, 300 or so superficially, and interactions with OFWAT, the Environment Agency, water companies, other scientists and members of the public affected by sewage spills.

Professor Hammond says in his evidence:

“The evidence I have selected suggests that: 

• there are many more spills than reported by the general public and WCs spills are not infrequent and due to short-lived “storm” events as claimed by WCs 
• EDM devices are not yet fully reliable in the detection of spills
• the EA needs expertise in Big Data analysis to cope with the volume of accumulating sewage treatment and monitoring data to assist their enforcement of permit conditions
• terms in EA permits are being abused and need precise definition (e.g. “rainfall” needs a technical definition; “effluent” must not mean a mix of untreated sewage and treated effluent)
• citizen science contributes to spill detection and permit enforcement and deserves more funding
• WCs should publish effluent quality, metered flow and spill start/stop times, a month in arrears
• volumes of untreated sewage spills are essential to understand their impact on river ecosystems and to inform punitive fines to discourage poor STW maintenance and management

In a separate research paper published in Nature Partner Journals in March 2021, Professor Hammond and colleagues presents novel pollution event reporting methodologies to identify likely untreated sewage spills from wastewater treatment plants.

EAC Chair: piecemeal approach to investment by water companies demonstrates urgent need to upgrade regulatory and investment model

According to Environmental Audit Committee Chairman, Rt Hon Philip Dunne MP, the water companies need to double the level of annual investment in wastewater treatment for AMP8 to tackle the combined sewer overflows (CSOs).

Commenting on Ofwat’s recent announcement that the water sector is set to invest £2.8 billion in environmental projects, which allows an additional £850 million of capital investment across several water companies, he described it as “a positive step in the right direction, with many measures seeking to improve water quality of rivers and reduce the environmental harm from sewage discharges.”

“However, this piecemeal approach to investment by the water companies simply demonstrates the urgent need to upgrade our regulatory and investment model. We still need coherent long-term plans and funding to address water companies’ inadequate and polluting sewerage systems.”

Click here to read written evidence submitted by Professor Hammond to Parliament February 2021 entitled How adequate are the monitoring and reporting requirements around water company discharges? How can technology improve and assist with transparency and enforcement?

Click here to read research paper published in Nature Partner Journals in March 2021 Detection of untreated sewage discharges to watercourses using machine learning