Benyon: Splitting sewage from runoff would triple water bills

Tackling storm overflows by entirely splitting out sewage from clean surface runoff would treble water customers’ average annual bills to more than £1,200, Lord Benyon has told fellow peers.

During a debate on discharges in the House of Lords on Monday (14 November), the water minister was challenged by Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Bakewell about the timeframe being proposed by the government to deal with sewage discharges from storm overflows.

Under a plan published by the government in August, water companies are obliged to eliminate by 2050 ecological problems caused by storm overflows.

Baroness Bakewell said the government’s 2050 target date is “simply too long to deal with this noxious problem.”

Pointing to research conducted for the government, Lord Benyon said the problems from overflows could be entirely solved by dividing sewage from runoff like the rain flowing off roofs and driveways that currently goes straight into sewers.

However, this work could lead to a threefold increase in average annual bills, he said: “If we do that, it would have an impact of £800 on the average bill, taking water bills from just over £400, or more than that, to about £1,230 a year.

“We have to think of people, particularly those who are nervous at a time of increasing household costs, and we have to get this right. It is easy to come here and say that ministers should be doing more, faster. We are working really hard to resolve this problem, but we have to be mindful of people’s bills.”

Lord Benyon also said during the debate that tackling sewage discharges into rivers is “much more complex issue than just water company bashing.

“Ministers are prepared to give water companies a bashing where it is necessary and that is what we are doing, in incentives and enforcement,” he said, adding that there were other causes of sewage discharges, such as farming and households pouring materials like paint and oil down drains.

As an example, he said the “vast majority” of the widely publicised recent outflow at the coastal village of St Agnes in Cornwall was “probably soil run-off from farms and run-off from roads” after 12 hours of rainfall.

Responding to concern expressed by the Duke of Wellington, who led efforts last year in the House of Lords to beef up the Environment Act’s provisions on preventing storm discharges, that the government needs a “greater sense of urgency” on the issue, Lord Benyon said there is “absolute determination” to resolve it.

The duke said that since the passage of the Environment Act there has been “little progress” in reducing storm overflows and other sewage discharges into rivers.