The government has announced that fast-tracked investment of £180m over the next 12 months is expected to prevent more than 8,000 sewage spills polluting English waterways. According to Defra, it follows the Secretary of State directing water and sewage companies last December to measurably reduce sewage spills over the next year by accelerating commitments and delivering new […]

Read More

Interesting new research published in Nature-based Solutions Sitting in our own soup? Combined sewers, climate change and nature-based solutions for urban water management in Berlin Highlights Pollution impacts from combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are increasing with climate change. Interest in measures of success for future responses accompanies growing awareness of impacts. Stakeholder interviews and literature […]

Read More

Southern Water has published a new plan (in map form), setting out the company’s long-term strategy to 2050 that will restore and protect the regions’ rivers and coastal habitats. The first step is set out in the Business Plan for 2025-2030, which includes the single largest investment in the environment to date of £3.3 billion. […]

Read More

An investigation by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations has highlighted how hundreds of potentially toxic road runoff outfalls are polluting England’s rivers. No regulator is monitoring the scale of impact of dangerous chemicals on wildlife or public health. Last month, National Highways reported it had assessed its discharge points and found 1,236 outfalls and soakaways […]

Read More

The BBC reports that the UK government was defeated in the House of Lords last week, when their bid to weaken rules that protect environmentally vulnerable waters from extra nutrient pollution, a retreat from EU environmental standards, was blocked. The proposed amendment looked to scrap rules that prevent new developments from being approved if there […]

Read More

A BBC investigation has found that three water companies – Southern Water, Thames Water and Wessex Water, illegally discharged sewage hundreds of times last year on days when it was not raining. The practice, known as “dry spilling”, is banned because it can lead to higher concentrations of sewage in waterways. The BBC says that […]

Read More

A major new Unearthed investigation highlights how sewage is affecting nature. According to Greenpeace, the investigation has revealed that sewage poured into England and Wales’ most-precious conservation sites for more than 300,000 hours in 2022. Over the past five months, Unearthed has been conducting an analysis of data on water companies’ sewage spills in sites […]

Read More

Preventing excessive sewage discharges requires long-term decision-making, according to a new ICE insight paper. Sewage discharges into the UK’s rivers and onto beaches have attracted significant attention recently. They have increased in many areas due to urban expansion, changing weather patterns, and ageing infrastructure. They occur because large parts of the UK have a combined […]

Read More