13 Apr 2022
From the Guardian Water companies discharged raw sewage into English rivers 372,533 times last year, a slight reduction on the previous year. The water companies covering England released untreated sewage for a combined total of more than 2.7m hours; compared with 3.1m hours in 2020, according to data released by the Environment Agency (EA) on […]
19 Jan 2022
Last week’s report from the Environmental Audit Committee was picked up by numerous sources, including the BBC and the Guardian. BBC leads on ‘’Chemical cocktail’ polluting English rivers’ Read more The Guardian Water companies in England should each designate a stretch of river as bathing water by 2025 to drive the clean-up of a chemical cocktail of […]
11 Jan 2022
From the Guardian England’s Environment Agency has told its staff to “shut down” and ignore reports of low-impact pollution events because it does not have enough money to investigate them, according to a leaked internal report. The ruling on so-called category 3 and 4 incidents means that events such as farm pollution or hazardous dumps by business […]
30 Jun 2021
Helen Stace updates on the tragic state of the River Wye and the impact on our wildlife. The River Wye should be a proud and joyous example of a healthy river, considering that it is a notified Site of Special Scientific Interest and Special Area of Conservation, national and international designations intended to protect the […]
11 May 2021
New Environment Bill provisions to tackle storm overflows – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) The Environment Bill will include new legal duties to tackle sewage discharges into rivers and help protect our waterways. Three new measures on storm overflows, announced last month by Defra, will be added by government amendment to the Environment Bill later this year. The Bill […]
17 Mar 2021
Link to the Inquiry here Written evidence from Water UK here Written evidence from Ofwat (rather weak and very non-committal) here Main article from Utility Week (scroll down to hear about use of artificial intelligence to map spills of untreated sewage) Eliminating the use of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) could cost £100 billion and nature-based […]
26 Jan 2021
From Defra A joint industry-government group established last year to tackle river pollution has today (22 January) agreed a new objective to prevent damage from storm overflows. The Storm Overflows Taskforce – made up of Defra, the Environment Agency, Ofwat, Consumer Council for Water, Blueprint for Water and Water UK – has agreed to set […]
15 Sep 2020
From Defra The chief executives of fifteen water companies met today (8 September) with Environment Minister Rebecca Pow, who challenged them to do more to protect the environment and safeguard our water supplies. Representatives from Ofwat, the Environment Agency, Natural England, Water UK, The Consumer Council for Water (CCWater) and the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) […]
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