Swimming in Sewage?

A couple of weeks ago, I received a podcast from green.tv via itunes, regarding the cleanliness of Britain's beaches. For my readers (well tow humans and a cat) who don't know, green.tv is the UNEP channel and most of the material comes from independent sources but it all relates one way or another to the environment. This film was from the (British) Environment Agency and was the agency patting its self on the back regarding the cleanliness of the bathing beaches.

While interesting, had it not been for the fact that two days prior the BBC had transmitted a programme that was exposing that our beaches are far from a clean as our government claims. Was this propaganda, from the British government, who would have thought that!

I have had serious doubts about the cleanliness of the beaches for a number of years. As my regular reader, well only reader, will know, I used to live in North Shields. In the nearby former fishing village, now swallowed up by urbanisation, is the Dove Marine Laboratory, part of Newcastle University. While there one day I encountered two women who were sampling the water. As I helped stop a sampling bottle get blown away in the wind, I fell into conversation.

As I was told latter, had I not been asking some interesting questions, they would not have engaged in conversation. I had asked about the run off from farms and not just assumed they were testing for human sewage. It was from this conversation that I leant that the testing methods that the Department for the Environment (now the Environment Agency) used were nearly thirty years old and seemed to be taken (deliberately?) from locations, and at times, when they would give (them) the best results.

While the association with these students helped enlighten me to a point at the time, as I was not actively posting on these topics at the time I now regret that I lost touch with them, as they could have helped answer some of the questions I had regarding the BBC programme.

While the beaches in Britain have been cleaned up, back in the 1980s they really were foul. I remember regularly seeing human effluent on various beaches as the sewage treatment system back then relied predominantly on pumping it out to sea. The same system that the Victorians used.

Then because of European legislation regarding the quality of drinking water and regulations regarding discharges into the sea, the water companies were forced to clean up the water and sewage system. This lead to substantial rises in the price of water. It should also be noted that in the 1980s the then state owned water and sewage system was sold off to private companies and as part of the incentive to these private companies, they were allowed substantial above inflation price increases so that they could raise the funds to spend the billions needed to upgrade the sewage systems.

This all seamed to have been done and the visible pollution was greatly reduced. The beaches were visibly cleaner. However, as not all pollution is visible monitoring was needed to check on the hidden pollution and especially the bacterial load as this can cause illness. Even on the beaches that are rated as excellent there is a one in twenty chance of getting a Gastroenteritis as a result of swimming in the sea, according to the “Good Beach Guide. And on the beaches that are graded good, the ones that just pass the legal minimum standard, that increases to a one in seven chance. Hence the Environmental Agency monitoring of beaches and bathing water and the need for that monitoring. This monitoring is important as in the event of sudden downpours or extreme weather event the same pipes that carry the sewage also carries the storm water.

Now this is where the situation gets really interesting and was not looked at in the BBC programme. As the justification for the high price of water charges was so that the water companies had the income to make the investment in upgrading and improving the infer-structure so that no untreated sewage would ever need to be discharged in the sea. The outfall pipes would be left in place to act as storm drains to help stop flooding or in the worse case prevent storm waters causing a back up where sewage could escape into peoples homes. Even allowing for a changing climate these discharges should only happen twice or thrice per year.

Well that's fine! What is this wood mouse worrying about I hear you ask. Well with over twenty thousand of these combined sewage overflows, at the legal minimum that is nearly sixty thousand events per year. Also with some of these CSOs (Combined Sewage Overflows) discharging on a daily basis, then the sea is effectively being treated as a sewage treatment plant by the water companies.

As the Environment Agency licences the water companies to allow the discharge of raw untreated sewage, now here is the really clever bit, the water companies don't even have to tell the Environment Agency when they do discharge.

This has built up into a rather cosy relationship where the government agency responsible for monitoring pollution are deliberately turning a blind eye on what's happening and the water companies have under invested. They have already spent eight billion pounds on improvements to the sewage system. Improvements that should have made this a rare and unique event. This was the justification for the increased bills after all. But instead of the government ensuring the investments were made, the water companies have diverted large chunks of the extra income into dividends.

Britain and British consumers now face a bill for a further eight billion pounds to deal with the extreme weather events as a result of climate change. Now as this was part of the justification for the price increases being three and four times the rate of inflation and why water now costs four times what it did in the 1980s, I can see the consumer will have further price hikes.

We can not escape these costs as the European regulations are due to become even more stringent in 2012. Going back to the Environment Agency film, according to that; Britain is ahead of the game and have nearly reached the new targets already. That begs the question: Why is the European Union taking Britain to court for failing to meet the current regulations?

The European commission has selected some sample charges, using Torbay, Whitburn (Near me) and London, in England. Kilbarchan in Scotland and Burry Inlet in Wales as test cases. As the commission believes that Britain and the water companies are using the seas as an illegal sewage treatment works.

The volume of the sewage discharge is so great that when the local council at Llanelli tested the water at Llanelli Beach, the bacterial readings were ten times the legal limit. As Llanelli Beach is part of Burry Inlet a once important Cockle fishery, the impacts of the failures to hold the water companies to account has killed off an important fishing and wildlife area.

The Environment Agency are investigating the causes of the deaths of the cockles, they are dying by the billion. As are the European Commission. But the Environment Agency can not say if the twelve direct and forty indirect sewage outflows, are the cause. Is Homer Simpson running the Environment Agency? It beggars belief what government bodies will claim to get themselves off the hook. Or should that be out of the S...?