The Rivers Trust has given its reaction to the Environment Agency environmental performance report on the water industry.

THE RIVERS TRUST RESPONSE TO WATER AND SEWERAGE COMPANY ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE REPORT: WINNING SLOWLY IS THE SAME AS LOSING

The Environment Agency published its Environmental Performance Report for water and sewerage companies today, assessing nine water companies’ progress against a set of environmental targets from 2016 to 2020.

Overall, the report shows 5 out of 9 companies achieved an industry-leading 4 star rating for 2020, and 3 companies achieved this rating for at least 3 of the last 5 years – United Utilities, Severn Trent, and Wessex Water. By contrast, Southern Water and South West Water failed to make any significant environmental progress, with a rating of just 2 stars in 2020. None of the water companies managed to achieve all of the expectations set out by the EA in 2015.

This report shows that the water sector has been moving generally in the right direction over the last 5 years – we see for the first time 5 out of 9 of the Water Companies receiving 4 stars for environmental performance – but progress overall is still too slow and persistent laggards are not responding to public and regulatory pressure.

The Rivers Trust wants to see the inclusion of sewage overspills in this assessment. 1,919 pollution incidents were reported for 2020 from water company sewerage and clean water assets, and yet we know that there were 403,171 raw sewage overspills during the same period.  We still need better monitoring and reporting to understand what proportion of these overspills were within permit conditions and which illegally resulted in pollution and risks to river users.

Read more here.