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Interesting items covering this on the radio over the last couple of days while the bill was pinging back and forth between the Houses. As ever it's more complex than the headlines would have us believe.
The water companies are allowed to divert stuff into watercourses or the sea in certain conditions.
In large areas, if not the whole of the UK, rainwater finds its way into the same main sewers as foul water from our toilets etc. Because of development and other factors, of which paving over gardens for car parking is one, quantities of run off water are increasing. Without getting into a debate about causation what we used to call cloudbursts and longer periods of very heavy rain are increasing.
There comes a point where the waste water plants are at risk of being overwhelmed. If that happens then not only do settlement tanks etc overflow but also the excess water can destroy the biological process by which foul waste is broken down. Under those circumstances then 'force majeure' means that to save the plants the operators need to divert the incoming flow into by pass pipes/weirs so that raw sewage - complete with poo, condoms and tampons - goes into watercourses or the sea.
Putting that right, and the systems are legacies from Victoria onwards, will be a long term project costing billions. It's not just a tap that can be turned off.
But, the water companies, sometimes at a junior level and driven by 'targets' are opening the by pass channels too often and without due cause. Southern Water were recently fined millions for incidents of that nature along the South Coast around the Chichester area.
Legislation should be incentivising the companies to invest in systems that don't overflow but also to ensure they plan better to avoid careless overflows.
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