Nearly one in four UK sea swimmers will not venture into the water this summer because of sewage, according to a new Liberal Democrat poll.
Just over 30 per cent of UK adults said they would go swimming in the sea over the summer, and of these, 23 per cent said they would not this year due to companies dumping sewage. of water.
The Government has recently said that it will allow the Environment Agency (EA) to impose unlimited fines on water companies that pollute unnecessarily.
Current fines are capped at £250,000, making it cheaper to pay that than fix the pollution problem, Environment Secretary Therese Coffey told MPs earlier this month.
Cathryn Ross, interim chief executive of Thames Water, recently described many of her company’s pipes as “aging assets” that should have been replaced.
The utility ran up £14 billion in debt, with many critics blaming shareholders for taking too much money out of the company over the previous 30 years without investing enough in infrastructure.
Many other water companies have faced similar convictions. They are only supposed to release raw sewage after heavy rain to prevent sewage from backing up the system and flooding homes and businesses, and the most recent data shows that together they dumped sewage 372,533 times in 2022.
