Can sewage spewing into UK waters be stopped?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sewage entered British waters for around 3 million hours in 2020 in over 400,000 pollution incidents. Hugo Tagholm, chief executive of Surfers Against Sewage tells Tamasin Ford why this is happening. Public pressure for the government and water companies to do something about this is mounting, particularly since it's become known that privately owned water companies in England paid their shareholders almost $80 billion in dividends over the last 30 years. WaterUK represents all of the water and sewage providers across the UK. We hear from their director of policy, Stuart Colville. Is tougher legislation the answer? Sweden faced similar problems with their sewage system more than fifty years ago. Peter Sörngård, an environmental expert at the Swedish Water and Waste Water Association explains how they dealt with it.
Producer: Benjie Guy
(Picture: a sewage outflow pipe discharges sewage into a river. Credit: BBC.)
sewage spewing into British waters went viral on social media. The country’s Victorian era sewage systems are struggling to cope. We find out what’s being done about it and look to Sweden where they seem to be getting things right.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Tamerson Ford. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Water companies in the UK are facing massive public pressure after footage of sewage spewing into British waters went viral on social media. It is a real crisis now. Water companies are clearly breaching the discharge consent they have. |
| 0:22.7 | I don't think anyone would agree that 400,000 separate sewage pollution events is a reasonable |
| 0:27.3 | number. But with a sewage system dating back to Victorian times, is anyone really surprised? |
| 0:33.9 | We've had more intense rainfall due to climate change. We've had population growth. And we've had urban creep. So there's more concreting over of lawns and gardens, which is pushing more water into these networks, which were designed maybe 100 plus years ago. |
| 0:46.5 | So what's the answer? Tougher laws on water companies? Or simply a complete sewage system revamp? We find out in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:00.6 | The last 10 years of my filming around the UK in the rivers, |
| 1:04.9 | I am seeing more and more sewage entering the river. |
| 1:08.5 | This is Mark Barrow from the underwater media group |
| 1:11.1 | beneath British waters. |
| 1:13.1 | He was on the River Wharf in Yorkshire in the north of England, |
| 1:16.4 | speaking to the BBC's Panorama programme in April this year. |
| 1:20.5 | I would say now 95% of my dives I will encounter sewage or wipes or sandwich towels, |
| 1:26.3 | some form of waste product that's |
| 1:28.0 | been flushed down the toilet. |
| 1:33.0 | I'm in the river and then all of a sudden you've got this wall of silt that literally hits you |
| 1:41.4 | straight in the face and you know immediately what it is |
| 1:44.7 | because it's mixed in with sanitary waste. |
| 1:47.7 | And then I have to get out. |
| 1:49.8 | And it's not uncommon for me to get out of the water |
| 1:51.9 | and literally be draped in these products. |
| 1:55.7 | It's vile. |
| 1:58.2 | Last year, water companies discharged raw sewage into rivers in England more than 400,000 times. |
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