Water bosses tell MPs agriculture is undoing good work on river quality

Improvements to river quality made by water companies in recent years have been “eaten up” by agriculture, one company chief has told MPs during a hearing on river health.

The Environmental Audit Committee took evidence from the chief executives of Northumbrian, Severn Trent, Southern, South West and Thames on the sector’s work to address pollution in rivers and waterways.

Liv Garfield, head of Severn Trent, said her company had been consistently improving the health of waterways, but other contributors in catchments were having a detrimental effect.

“Whilst the water sector has improved-year-on-year for the last few years, all that gap has been eaten up by agriculture, so our rivers have gotten no better quality – we’re plateauing. The contribution from agriculture has swallowed the investment spend by the water sector,” Garfield explained.

Previous sessions of the EAC heard that river monitoring by the Environment Agency is inadequate, partly due to funding cuts.

Combined Sewer Overflows

All of the heads said their company had, or was close, to complete coverage of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) with event duration monitors (EDMs), although it was acknowledged these do not measure quantities.

The upcoming Environment Bill will require companies to report spills from CSOs, but the panel told the committee there is not yet the technology available to capture the information required by legislation.

The five chief executives said the whole sector was looking for and trialling appropriate technologies to comply with the requirement, but at present there are none available.

Current performance

Head of Southern Water, Ian McAulay, said the company had done a lot of work relating to CSOs “by necessity” over the years: “We’ve a good idea of what’s coming out – 97.1% is rainwater and surface water, not sewage.”

South West currently has the highest number of pollution incidents per kilometre of sewer at 225 in 2020 and a 2* performance rating from the EA. Chief executive Susan Davy explained the company was working towards achieving 4* by the end of AMP7.

She said the company is aiming to be “as close to zero as we can get”, which would be around 30 incidents by 2025.  This is being achieved through an increase of monitoring and analysis to understand what is happening across the network and identify what work and investment is needed.

Since joining Thames in September 2020, Bentley said she has been “impatient for change” to turnaround the failing business. She said investment during the current asset management period has been accelerated, with £100 million being spent to bring forward smart metering from AMP8 and complete the implementation of monitoring of CSOs.

Heidi Mottram, chief executive at Northumbrian, which was recognised as having 4* rating from the EA, told the committee that protecting the environment was at the heart of all the company does from board level down. She recommended that the water industry should be funded for proactive protection, which is what companies and their customers want to see.

Informing the public

On improving transparency by making data widely available, Garfield said Severn Trent had created a website to publish all data; McAulay said Southern had done the same and set up the Beach Buoy platform to give near real-time information about water quality at beaches.

Davy said South West provides information on beach bathing water to Surfers Against Sewage that is shared with the public. Bentley said  Thames’ EDM data should be publicly available by the end of next year.