Tag Archives: sewerage

Farron: Ministers must now wake up and smell the sewage

By Andy Boddington | Sun 17th July 2022 - 5:02 pm

While all eyes were on the leadership election last Thursday, the Environment Agency published its annual report on the environmental performance of water and sewerage companies. The agency has suffered from severe cuts to staff and that has limited its operational effectiveness. But it has too often pulled its punches, preferring diplomatic niceties to forceful language.

No longer. Outgoing chair Emma Howard Boyd didn’t mince her words in her last report on water and sewage. She called for prison sentences for the chief executives and board members of the companies responsible for the most serious pollution incidents. Company directors should be struck off. “Water companies exist to serve the public. Their environmental performance is a breach of trust. The polluter must pay.”

Reacting to the report Tim Farron said:

For months we have been calling for these water companies to pay for dirtying our precious rivers and beaches.  Time and time again, Ministers defended them whilst otters were poisoned and we swam in sewage infested waters.

Ministers must now wake up and smell the sewage. They can’t ignore the Environment Agency like they ignored the public.

We need a Sewage Tax on water companies making outrageous multi-billion pound profits. Why should they profit off destroying our environment? The whole thing stinks.

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NewsHound

Channel 4: Moran on sewage in rivers

By NewsHound | Wed 29th June 2022 - 8:55 am

Yesterday evening, Layla Moran appeared on the Political Slot on Channel 4 to discuss the problem of water companies flushing sewage into Britain’s rivers. She said:

Britain’s countryside is something to be proud of. It’s part of our national identity and its beautiful rivers, lakes and streams are no different. But that’s under threat. In part because the water companies are dumping raw sewage into them. And shockingly that’s legal.

The government has repeatedly blocked bids to hold these water companies to account including a Lib Dem proposal to name and shame the water companies if they are found to have poisoned animals like otters or our family pets with these sewage dumps. The whole thing stinks.

During the programme, Moran spoke to Ashley Smith from Windrush Against Sewerage Pollution and Lib Dem member Jo Sanderson who swims in Wolvercote Mill Stream in Oxford.

The full programme.

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NewsHound

Farron: Sewerage bill moves to second reading

By NewsHound | Wed 20th April 2022 - 2:02 pm

Last night, Tim Farron presented a Lib Dem bill on controlling sewerage charges. MPs agreed to allow the bill to progress and its second reading will be on 6 May after Farron said:

Our lakes and rivers are our natural treasures, yet water company bosses are degrading those natural treasures to keep a hold of their own treasure. Last year, the water companies made profits of £2.7 billion and paid out £27 million in bonuses. Their chief executives earn seven-figure sums, yet they are free by law to preside over enormous numbers of dangerous discharges that damage our environment and our wildlife, and are a threat to human life, too.

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