Ofwat in dock over sewage discharge, says academic

The scientist credited with exposing water companies for illegally dumping untreated sewage into rivers accused regulators this weekend of being “asleep at the wheel”.

Jamie Woodward, professor of physical geography at the University of Manchester, said the £168m fine imposed last week on three water companies – Thames, Yorkshire and Northumbrian – for failing to stop repeated discharges of untreated effluent into waterways was “cash in the mouth” compared with the huge dividends they had paid to shareholders.

The academic added that Ofwat had failed to act until last week despite knowing about the illegal dumping of wastewater “for years”.

Water companies are only allowed to dump untreated wastewater into rivers in exceptional circumstances, such as after heavy rain.

According to the Environment Agency (EA), wastewater discharged by water companies into England’s rivers and seas doubled last year to a total of 3.6 million hours. It is not known how many of the 464,000 discharges from stormwater overflow pipes occurred illegally on dry days, as water companies are not required to report any links between discharges and the weather.

Woodward’s groundbreaking research linked huge amounts of microplastics found in a local riverbed near Manchester to untreated sewage discharged outside permitted conditions.

Microplastics are tiny particles found in everyday items, such as synthetic clothing or wet wipes, that enter the wastewater system when they are washed or disposed of.

They are harmful to aquatic life, but existing wastewater treatment processes can remove the vast majority of them. The fragments that settle on river beds are usually washed out to sea after floods.

Their presence therefore implies that there has been a spillage of raw sewage on dry days, when it is illegal to do so. Woodward and his team from the university’s geography unit found huge concentrations of microplastics in the River Tame beneath sewage treatment plants operated by United Utilities, the local water monopoly, even when there had been no rain. The presence of these microplastic hotspots, which can form in dry weather and at low flow rates, “provides very clear evidence that raw sewage is routinely being discharged outside the conditions permitted by EA permits,” Woodward told his colleagues investigating the scandal.

In addition to the three fined last week, eight other companies are under scrutiny for sewage spills after Ofwat recently expanded its investigation to include four more suppliers, including United Utilities and Severn Trent.

“Regulators should have done what we were doing,” Woodward told the Mail on Sunday.

‘Instead, water companies have been reporting[wastewater spills]themselves, actually grading their own work, while regulators simply mark it as done.

“Ofwat and the Environment Agency have fallen asleep at the wheel. What on earth have they been doing for the last ten years?”

Information on the date and time of wastewater discharges is not yet available in a uniform format. It should be available later this year as a single national live feed. Regulators also do not record the volume of wastewater discharges.

“We need full transparency, but the water companies have tried to put the brakes on it,” Woodward said. Experts say regulators have had their budgets to oversee water companies cut since 2010 and the money has gone to improving flood defenses.

Ofwat said it shared “public anger at the environmental performance of water companies”.

A spokesman said: “Our investigations into the remaining companies are continuing and where we find failings we will act.” United Utilities said treated wastewater and stormwater were a “pathway for microplastics” but there were “many other sources” of plastic waste which are part of “a wider societal problem”.

The EA said it first became aware of the scale of non-compliance in 2021 due to increased monitoring.

“Since 2015 we have completed 61 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies for pollution offences, resulting in fines of more than £150m,” a spokesman said.