The stink over Britain’s sewage

August is prime time for enjoying Britain’s rivers and coastal areas, but not so much this year. Pristine waterways have been polluted with raw sewage, yielding photos of gray-brown sludge and thousands of dead fish killed by toxic waste. It’s a brave person who orders oysters right now.
There is nothing new about the twin problems that have been making headlines lately — water leakages and sewage dumps. But heavy rainfall after a period of drought led to overflows from a system that wasn’t built for either today’s population size or the effect of dramatic climate change.
The real question is why regulators have done such a poor job of policing private companies. Back in 2012, the European Commission took the UK to court over the level of sewage that water companies were allowed to dump into rivers.
The court ruled that overflows should only happen in “exceptional” circumstances, such as following unusually heavy rainfall.
The water companies decided “exceptional” applied to a lot of events. There were more than 400,000 discharges of untreated sewage in 2020 alone. Analysis by two researchers at the University of Brighton found that pollution incidents have been trending upwards since 2018, with over 9.4 million hours spent dumping raw sewage between 2016 and 2021. It’s likely much worse than that since it seems the devices installed to track sewage discharge, which the industry was forced to adopt following the European court ruling, don’t work most of the time.
Even hefty fines don’t seem to deter polluters. Last year, water companies were charged penalties for 62 serious pollution incidents. The most egregious violator, Southern Water, was fined £90 million ($106 million) after pleading guilty to knowingly dumping raw sewage into rivers and seas for nearly six years.
Liz Truss , the probable next prime minister, has batted away revelations that she oversaw plans to reduce surveillance of water companies dumping raw sewage when she was environment secretary between 2014 and 2016. The example serves as a reminder that while sometimes needed, slashing regulations can have unintended consequences and costs. But blaming Truss is too easy.
There is a stronger case for arguing that the current problems are a legacy of privatising the water companies. England and Wales are almost alone in the world (along with Chile) in having fully privatised water companies. And yet it doesn’t follow that reversing that decision is the right solution, as the Labour Party has argued.
It’s easy to see the appeal when you look at the mess. Water and sewage suppliers have a captive customer base and prices set by the regulator which provide plenty of room for profits. Their bosses are also handsomely rewarded. Thames Water boss Sarah Bentley was given a £3.1 million “golden hello” for taking on the job at the UK’s largest water provider. That’s in contrast to Scotland’s water company, which is under public control and better regarded. Its chief executive earns about £270,000 a year.
And yet nationalisation would come at a hefty price — some £90 billion, by some estimates — to taxpayers at a time when public debt has been rising and public-sector resources are hugely stretched.

—Bloomberg