The Environment Agency said in a statement to NBC News that it had been “clear that comprehensive action across all sectors is needed to achieve the cleaner rivers and waterways we all want to see.”
In May, Water UK, the industry body that represents water companies, apologized that the industry “has not shown the leadership it should have done on sewage spills” and said it would spend an extra 10 billion pounds ($12 billion) until the end of the decade on reducing overflow spills and building new infrastructure. That was in addition to a previous commitment to invest 3.1 billion pounds ($38 billion) from 2020 to 2025.
“We get why people are upset,” the industry body said about the spillage of raw sewage into the U.K.’s streams, rivers and beaches.
However, the costs — which Water UK Chair Ruth Kelly told the British broadcaster Sky News would be recouped from customers through “modest increases to their bills” — have prompted campaigners to say the money should have been reinvested instead of enriching shareholders.
That water companies pay millions of pounds in dividends to shareholders while hiking customers’ bills has also produced anger.
Data from Britain’s Office of National Statistics shows that bills have increased by 363% since privatization in July 1989. Meanwhile, during the 2021-22 financial year, the U.K.’s main water companies paid out almost 966 million pounds ($1.2 billion) in dividends to their shareholders, according to the global business-data platform Statista.
‘Clearly unacceptable’
Amid growing public outrage, Coffey, the local member of Parliament and the country’s environment secretary, in April announced potentially unlimited fines for polluting water companies.
“Sewage entering our rivers is clearly unacceptable,” Coffey said in a statement the following week. “The public is rightly disgusted by the water companies’ excessive use of overflows, which is a blight on our beautiful rivers and coastlines.”
Coffey’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Last month, the government also announced that it was expanding its Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan to encompass all coastal and estuary storm overflows with a particular focus on areas of high ecological significance, as well as areas used for bathing and shellfish cultivation.
Still, the government has not proposed fundamental changes to the way water companies collect from consumers, distribute profits to shareholders or deal with untreated sewage during heavy rain, said Smith, the water consultant.
The industry was “broken,” he said, “because it became greedy, because it became short-term, because it had to get increased dividends for shareholders.”
Fining water companies has little impact on their behavior, Woodward said.
“They pay the fines and continue to pollute. The fines are trivial compared to their revenue streams. Dumping sewage is part of a highly profitable business model — it has been for decades,” he said. “A CEO in any other industry would go to prison for dumping waste on this scale.”
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