[UPDATE 26/10/20, 11:35pm: this evening I'm hearing that the government has reviewed and toughened up the draft bill further. It is going beyond "requiring a plan" from water companies, to introducing a "duty to reduce" discharge. More when detail comes through.]
Last week I voted for an Environment Bill that is deliverable, sensible and will reduce the discharge of sewage into our rivers and waterways.
I also voted to remove an unrealistic, unaffordable and undeliverable (part of an) amendment to that Bill which could have cost twice as much as the pandemic response.
I would not risk flooding our streets with overflowing sewage - or hitting the households on them with a bill for up to £20,000.
We should be concerned that some were.
Since some appear to have misunderstood this and accused me of voting to allow the discharge of sewage into our rivers and sea, I have written a longer note on my website which explains this in more detail. The link is here:
https://www.robin-millar.org.uk/.../environment-bill-vote...
What I will say here is that the discharge of untreated sewage by water companies is a very serious concern for anyone.
And 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 why I place great importance on good stewardship of the environment.
If you want to know more, read on!
THE PROBLEM OF POLLUTION
Pollution is one of the great challenges of our time: an ongoing and complex problem that will only be solved through careful and deliberate action. It is too important, in my opinion, to over-simplify the issues or misrepresent the problems. It helps no-one and does not get us any closer to a solution.
The problem goes back over centuries, not just in the growth of our civilisations and actions as people and societies but in our sewage and drainage systems which have also developed over that time. 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.
The problem comes when heavy rains overwhelm this system and pressure increases beyond what they are designed for. To avoid a catastrophic burst into streets, fields and even backing up into homes, there needs to be a safe release of that pressure.
That is done by a combination of tanks, run offs and release points (known as Combined Storm Overflows or CSOs) and 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.
As this occurs during heavy rainfall sewage will be both heavily diluted and will be washed through swiftly – 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 sewage to wash through.
In Dyffryn Conwy we have regular high rainfall and run off – which to my mind means we need the infrastructure to cope with it.
ARE WE MAKING 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 formed the Storm Overflows Task Force (in August 2020) to bring together key stakeholders (from the water industry, environmental NGOs, regulators, and Government) and agree a long-term goal to eliminate harm from storm overflows.
It 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 also 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.
It is for the Welsh government to secure its own approach and deals.
In Wales, what I will say is that here in Aberconwy, the system we have is operated as explained above by Dwr Cymru. 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.
Their 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 and main amendment help deal with the problem – the note on my website explains this in more 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 support this.
However, the section of the Amendment (No 45) that I voted to remove, 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 to that decision. 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 wording may have been well-intentioned but was not a realistic, sensible or affordable part of the amendment. I could not and did not support it and voted to remove it.
