Defra threatened with legal action over CSOs

An environmental group has threatened legal action against environment minister Rebecca Pow’s department for not dealing comprehensively with combined sewer overflows (CSOs).

Salmon and Trout Conservation (STC), a charity campaigning for wild fish and their environment, wrote to the head of the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to remind her of the department’s and water companies’ legal obligation to “effectually deal with sewage”.

STC highlighted section 94 of the Water Industry Act 1991, which requires water and sewerage companies to “effectually drain sewers” and argued that discharging into rivers goes against this.

The letter said water companies have failed to meet the duty placed upon them, but questioned why Ofwat and Defra had allowed a situation to develop since privatisation where infrastructure was not adequate to deal with population growth and the needs of the 21st century.

Asset management plans have neither sufficiently required, nor sufficiently enabled the water companies to ensure their infrastructure keeps pace with population growth, STC said.

“Plainly, there is not much that can be done to remedy the mistakes of the previous seven AMP rounds – that polluted water has already passed under the bridge,” the letter said.

It continued that for PR24, Ofwat and government must address the “unacceptable” frequency and duration of all CSOs, other than when used during exceptional rainfall.

The letter was in response to Defra’s announcement in March about accelerating work to reduce discharges from CSOs. The measures, to be implemented in response to Philip Dunne’s sewage and inland waters bill, included reporting by water companies and parliament on the frequency of CSO use.

STC argued that water companies were already under legal obligation to make that data public in accordance with the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

Efforts for “reducing” discharges as promised by Defra’s announcement would be insufficient to meet the existing duties, it said.

“Water companies’ plans for 2025-2030 must be sufficient to allow water companies to meet their section 94 duties in relation to the use and operation of all CSOs,” STC wrote. “In the event that those plans do not deal sufficiently with CSOs continuing to flow when they should not, those plans will be open to legal challenge.”

In response a Defra spokesperson said: “We have made clear to the water companies that they must take their environmental obligations seriously. Ministers hosted a roundtable last September, and were clear that the volume of sewage discharged into rivers and other waterways must be reduced.”

Together with the Environment Agency, Ofwat, CCW, Blueprint for Water and Water UK, Defra established a Storm Overflows Taskforce to accelerate progress in tackling CSOs. The Taskforce has set a goal to eliminate harm from overflows and has taken steps to improve monitoring and transparency.

“New measures on reducing storm overflows will be put into law – committing the government to produce a statutory plan and report regularly to parliament on progress. This will be an important step forward to cut down the water sector’s reliance on storm overflows,” the Defra spokesperson added.