The National Engineering Policy Centre has initiated a new project considering engineering interventions to mitigate the public health risks posed by wastewater pollution of rivers, in-land and coastal waters across the UK.

Recreational users of natural bodies of water – including rivers, in-land and coastal waters – are potentially at risk from pollution caused by raw sewage and the continuous discharge of treated wastewater which still contains significant numbers of human faecal pathogens.

While new wastewater targets and duties on water companies have aimed to reduce environmental and public health harm, the UK’s ageing infrastructure makes wastewater pollution a complex problem to address effectively – any individual interventions need to be considered as part of a wider system that must achieve multiple goals from reaching net zero operational emissions to improving ecological health.

Following discussion with the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England Sir Chris Whitty , the Academy and its partners in the National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) have initiated a wastewater and public health project to assess the viability of a range of interventions to mitigate the public health risks posed by sewage pollution of rivers, in-land and coastal waters accessed by recreational users across the UK. It will highlight some of the choices that government, regulators and industry will need to address.