A Very British Scandal: None Of England's Water Companies Met Their Sewage Spill Goals
In a sign of just how challenging it is to get effluent up to international quality standards, every wastewater company in England and Wales has been found short of their pollution and untreated sewage spill goals for last year.
“The 11 largest companies monitored by water regulator Ofwat are together facing tens of millions of pounds in financial penalties for last year’s failings as the industry faces intense scrutiny at a time of widespread drought and concerns over sea pollution,” The Independent reported. “A Water UK spokesperson said companies agreed there was ‘an urgent need for action’ and called on the government, regulators, water companies, agriculture and other sectors to ‘come together to create a comprehensive national plan to bring about the transformation in our rivers and waterways we all want to see.’”
Around the world, wastewater companies are monitored and penalized for missing targets around their services set by regulators. In the UK, it’s now clear that these companies are facing fundamental challenges that prevent them from hitting their targets. For instance, like many of their stateside counterparts, they are long overdue for infrastructure upgrades.
“The entire infrastructure needs to be updated very, very rapidly to keep pace with the changing climate,” Hannah Cloke, an English hydrology professor, told The Independent. “When we do have a period of very dry weather or we do have really, really heavy rainfall, we pretty much have disasters across the board because everything starts to break.”
And if these recent penalties were not enough to motivate this fundamental change in the UK, perhaps an emerging international crisis might be. England’s inability to properly treat sewage before discharging it into the environment is now prompting criticisms from a European neighbor.
“French MEPs have accused the U.K. of neglecting environmental commitments by allowing raw sewage to be dumped in the Channel and North Sea,” per Politico. “The action threatens health and marine life on the French coast, the politicians claimed in a letter calling for legal or political action from the European Commission.”
As England’s wastewater treatment problems spiral into an international crisis, perhaps their methods of rehabilitation will offer lessons to the rest of the world.
To read more about how wastewater treatment operations meet pollution goals, visit Water Online’s Wastewater Regulations And Legislation Solutions Center.