It’s time to own the narrative on CSOs

Monitoring for compliance can bring benefits to the water sector but companies need to tell customers their own stories about spills or face a continued public backlash, a senior figure at the Environment Agency has warned.

Speaking at the WWT Wastewater Conference, Dominic Shepherd, the watchdog’s water quality permitting and compliance manager, discussed how monitoring of discharges using event duration monitors (EDMs) has left the water industry and its regulators exposed to scrutiny and criticism by politicians and media.

“The vast majority of the public think those are illegal spills and discharges, but they are not,” Shepherd said. “We can get so much better at how we describe what that intelligence means.”

He urged companies to “take hold of the narrative” around combined sewer overflows (CSOs) to change public perceptions, which must start with data from the EDMs.

“Monitoring for compliance is here, there’s going to be more of it and it’s out there in the public domain,” Shepherd said. “I won’t pretend it’s not going to be painful – it’ll be hard at first for everybody but we should be getting it out there – warts and all – and set the new baseline. Then, when we get criticism about sewage in the sea, we can explain where they are legal discharges. Over time we can own the narrative and explain what is happening as a sector to improve it.”

He told companies monitoring for compliance was an “opportunity to be embraced” for the good of the sector and waterways. It will help identify instances of non-compliance with permits to understand where a company might have a problem in its network to address.

As regulator, he said the EA is going to help by reframing how discharges are talked about “in a better, simple way”. At present, it does that in reactive statements rather than proactively.

By the end of this year, all CSOs must be monitored by an EDM with data made publicly available as well as provided to the EA. This will, Shepherd pointed out, open the sector up for criticism but it will also help the agency pinpoint where non-compliance has taken place and to rectify it.

“There will be some difficult stories to tell and to help people understand,” Shepherd said and added that for the first time, the EA can highlight that only a small proportion of discharges are not legal.

He added that for many years the government discouraged any mentions of combined sewer overflows.

“Defra did not want to talk at all about storm overflows – we were not allowed to talk about them in the press. But, because of the monitoring, now it’s out there so we are talking about why CSOs are used, why they operate and what we’re doing about frequent spillers.”

At present, the public debate around CSOs does not explore the damage potentially caused by overflows, or in many cases by other polluters in a waterway, Shepherd said.

“The narrative is always raw sewage being dumped, which is something we can help change by presenting the facts then the companies can talk about their work to improve what isn’t the perfect situation.”

This was echoed by Richard Aylard, sustainability director at Thames Water, who added that the conversation was essential at a local level to help customers understand what was affecting their nearest stream or river, but also nationally.

“There’s a lot the water sector does agree upon,” Aylard said. “From an evidence-based perspective, this isn’t the worst thing happening to river. It’s not helping but it’s by no means the worst. But if we say that as individual companies, we sound defensive.”

He urged the wider sector to build a joined up message to help consumers understand as well as to ensure investment is targeted in schemes that will harvest the maximum benefits rather than as a knee-jerk reaction.