POLLUTION
The discharge of untreated sewage by water companies is a very serious concern for anyone. But for someone like myself who has been brought up in Eryri, enjoys the outdoors at every opportunity – and now represents one of the most beautiful parts of the UK – it is distressing. It is also why I place great importance on good stewardship of the environment.
Pollution is one of the great challenges of our time: an ongoing and complex problem that defies easy and simple solution. The consequences are real. Fish and plants die. People get sick – dangerously so. Beaches are closed. Businesses suffer. What we know as beautiful becomes grey and stagnates. What was clear and charming gains an odour of decay, abandonment and neglect.
I accept that there is a debate over the right approach, but over-simplifying the issues, misunderstanding or misrepresenting the problems helps no-one and does not get us any closer to a solution.
THE PROBLEM
The deliberate and unregulated discharge of sewage into watercourses – as a result of negligence, willful act or rogue developments – is already illegal and can be prosecuted.
This post deals with the discharge of sewage as a result of combined storm overflows.
Most of our sewage and drainage systems have developed over the last two centuries. Much of it is a credit to the Victorian engineers whose work and designs we still rely on today. It is designed so that surface and rain-water – from roofs via drainpipes and roads and car parks via road gullies – is channelled into the same system used for the wastewater and sewage that comes from our toilets and sinks and showers in our homes, and from businesses.
Most of the time, it is taken underground to wastewater treatment plants where it is cleaned and treated before being returned safely to the environment – discharged into our watercourses and rivers and even the sea.
As an aside, I will say here that the work of engineers is not glamorous. Engineers must derive pleasure from overcoming problems. Theirs is the quiet satisfaction of making things work for people who just want to get on with life and do not want to think about the problems. They are used to having a job well done being a job no-one notices. It is a case of “out of sight, out of mind” for most of us. Only occasionally when there is a smell – or a leak – do we pause to think what is happening.
I had the opportunity to see our water company, Dwr Cymru, working first-hand when I visited their plant in Llandudno Junction. It is a really impressive operation processing sewage from Llandudno, Junction, Conwy and further afield.
The problem comes when heavy rains – a more common occurrence in recent years – overwhelm this system. The pressure in water pipes increases beyond what they are designed for. To avoid a catastrophic failure – a rupture or burst – there needs to be a safe release of that pressure.
The measures for managing that surge in pressure are a combination of tanks, run offs and release points (known as Combined Storm Overflows or CSOs) which are built into the system.
And where does the release occur? A burst or catastrophic failure means streets floods and even build up backs up into gardens and homes. The alternative is a controlled discharge into watercourses. This is something that, regrettably, some residents of Deganwy know only too well at the moment – Dwr Cymru are investigating exactly this problem there right now.
It is worth noting this process of controlled discharge, working properly only occurs during heavy rainfall when by definition, any sewage will be both heavily diluted and will be washed through swiftly.
This is not ideal but it helps to understand what is actually happening – we have all seen notices saying a beach is closed for 48 hours after a storm, to allow the discharge to wash away.
It also explains why in Dyffryn Conwy this happens frequently – we have regular high rainfall and run off. Again, for me this is not acceptable – if we do have higher rainfall and run offs then we need the infrastructure to cope with it.
ANY PROGRESS?
This is a devolved area of policy and in Wales the situation with storm overflows is materially different to England, with monitoring already in place through Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans.
The UK government has already been doing a lot in England. The government has ensured that between 2020 and 2025, water companies will invest £7.1bn on environmental improvements in England. Of this, £3.1 billion will be invested in in storm overflow improvements.
The Government's draft Strategic Policy Statement to Ofwat makes it clear, for the first time, to the industry’s financial regulator, that it expects water companies to take steps to “significantly reduce storm overflows”, and that it expects funding to be approved for them to do so.
The Government has committed to undertaking a review of the case for implementing Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 in England. This Schedule would set mandatory build standards for sustainable drainage schemes on new developments, to help to reduce the pressure on combined sewer systems from surface water runoff, as well as providing multifunctional benefits such as for flood prevention and for nature.
Defra formed the Storm Overflows Task Force (in August 2020) to inform all these measures and more. This brings together key stakeholders (from the water industry, environmental NGOs, regulators, and Government) and has agreed a long-term goal to eliminate harm from storm overflows.
WHAT ABOUT WALES?
In Wales, and here in Aberconwy, the system we have is operated as explained above by Dwr Cymru. That operation – especially the CSOs – is regulated, permitted and monitored by Natural Resources Wales (NRW).
This role is delivered locally in conjunction with others such as the council. In Conwy the council is issued with a fixed number of water purity tests they can conduct.
This does mean it must ration the number and location of those tests (West Shore? Colwyn Bay? Conwy Estuary?) That inevitably will limit the information that can be recovered and what informs any action.
HOW DID I VOTE?
We would all like to wave a wand and fix this. But I hope it is clear from this description that the problem is not simply a matter of changing the law. Good government means asking how will it be delivered?
The Bill has been introduced to help deal with the problem – there’s a lot to it so I have put it at the end so you can see what it proposes in some detail. However, in brief it puts a duty on government and water companies to reduce discharges, publish information and to produce plans to do more – including the strategic development of the system over a 25 year period.
I was pleased to support the Bill on this latest stage of its journey through the House.
However, the Amendment 45 would have made it a duty on water companies to fix the system.
While well-intentioned it would require discharges into watercourses to be reduced regardless of weather conditions and without any plan to achieve this. The risk was this would leave water companies with no choice but to allow backflow – onto land and into properties.
The lack of a plan is critical. Any changes to make the system work even during heavy rains will include the physical work of building new networks of culverts, sewers and drains – separating the sewage from rainwater systems. This takes time and involves a huge amount of disruption. The cost has been estimated at between £150 billion to £600 billion.
To put that in perspective, £150 billion is bigger than the schools, police and defence budgets combined. At the other end of the range, £600 billion is nearly twice what has been spent by the UK government on responding to the pandemic across the UK.
These costs would have had to be passed onto the consumer and has been estimated between £5000 - £20,000 per household. I simply could not support that kind of blank cheque for the water companies – which would have to be paid for by consumers.
All in all, the amendment may have been well-intentioned but was not realistic, sensible or affordable. I could not and did not support such an amendment.
SUMMARY
Did I vote to allow the discharge of raw sewage into our rivers and the sea in Aberconwy?
No. I voted in favour of a deliverable, sensible Bill that will reduce the discharge of sewage into our rivers and waterways. I voted against an unrealistic, unaffordable and undeliverable amendment to that Bill which could have cost twice as much as the pandemic response.
WHAT IS IN THE BILL?
For those of you who are interested in more detail, the Environment Bill is still being debated (the process of going through parliament allows for extensive debate) but currently includes:
1. A new duty on Government to produce a statutory plan to reduce discharges from overflows and the harm this causes by September 2022, and report to Parliament on progress.
2. A new duty on water companies and the Environment Agency (in England) to publish data on storm overflow operation on an annual basis.
3. A new duty on government to produce a report setting out the actions that would be needed to eliminate storm overflow in England and the costs and benefits of those actions. This report will provide Parliament, the public and the water industry with up-front, clear and comprehensive information on the feasibility and cost of elimination. Between the Government plan on storm overflows and the new elimination report, the Government will set out transparently and precisely how far we can go in tackling storm overflows.
4. A new duty on water companies to publish near real time information (within 1 hour) of the commencement of an overflow, its location and when it ceases.
5. A new duty on water companies to continuously monitor the water quality upstream and downstream of a storm overflow and of sewage disposal works.
6. A new duty on water companies to produce comprehensive statutory Drainage and Sewerage Management Plans setting out how they will manage and develop their drainage and sewerage system over a minimum 25-year planning horizon, and how storm overflows will be addressed through these plans.
The Bill also requires the Government to set and achieve at least one new target to drive progress in the priority area of water. In a policy paper published in August 2020, the Government set out the objectives for targets currently under consideration. For water, these include reducing pollution from agriculture, wastewater, and abandoned metal mines, and reducing water demand.
