Thames Water is filling the Thames with sewage.
I have been a big fan of the Thames all my life. I was born in Oxford which is on the upper reaches of the Thames, I spent my childhood in Abingdon on Thames, my first job was as a farm labourer on the banks of the Thames, I recently lived in London for 20 years which is on the lower reached of the Thames and now I am back in Abingdon, and living five minutes’ walk from the Thames.
I have therefore followed the relentless destruction of the biodiversity of the Thames, which has been going on for many years. My article, on the decline of the European eel in the Thames, can be found on my website here.
Nor is it just the Thames that is under threat. Last year, a House of Commons Committee Report on the state of UK rivers, found that not a single river in England is free from chemical contamination. This comes most importantly from raw sewage discharges, which are the biggest single contributor to river pollution.
An important victory, however, against river pollution, has just been won by the Lib Dem’s, via a very timely freedom of information request. This has forced Thames Water not only to admit that they have dumped a staggering 72bn litres of raw sewage into the Thames since 2020 – which is (apparently) equal to 29,000 Olympic swimming pools – but also to present sewage discharge figures in a way that can be understood.
In other words to present sewages discharge figures by the volume they have discharged, rather than by the time it took for the discharge it, which has been the case in the past, and which tells us very little.
Earlier this year when challenged by campaigners on this, for example, Thames Water argued (remarkably), not only that they are under no legal obligation to present discharges by volume, but that they did not even have the technology to do it that way – a claim which campaigners rightly called it a “cover up”.
Even this turned out to be a pack of lies, however, since the information obtained by the Lib Dem’s showed that they had already been measuring sewage discharges by volume in some locations – particularly in London – where they needed the figures that way. This was the case, apparently, in their planning for the Thames Tideway project, which is the huge new super-sewer that is being built to take London sewage under the river to Becton.
One of the worst examples of raw sewage dumping that the Lib Dem request has exposed has been from the Thames Water treatment plant at Mogden, near Twickenham. This is one of the biggest sewage treatment plants in the UK – which treats sewage from 2.1 million people – which has managed to discharge a billion litres of raw sewage in a single day, in an area that contains a nature reserve, rare wildlife species, and where people swim in and boat on the river in large numbers.
This was closely followed at Crossness in East London, where 15.8bn litres of sewage has been dumped since 2020.
All this is catastrophic for aquatic biodiversity under conditions where – according to the Natural History Museum – the UK is already one of the most biodiversity-depleted countries in Europe. The Thames sees, mass die-offs of fish regularly taking place in pollution hot spots.
Munira Wilson, Lib Dem MP for Twickenham, has said Thames Water should be disbanded and replaced by a “public good company”, with a board populated by environmentalists, and that would not be allowed to prioritise profit over the environment. She said: “These horrifying revelations are proof that Thames Water needs to be ripped up. It is outrageous that Conservative ministers continue to sit on their hands and let Thames Water get away with this. The government is standing idly by whilst our rivers are poisoned and water firm execs pocket millions. The era of water firms putting profit before the environment must come to an end. These water firms are committing environmental crimes which are destroying our rivers and wildlife habitats, all whilst pocketing eye-watering sums of money”.
It is true that Thames Water – which is the biggest water company in the UK – has been fined £35.7m between 2017 and 2023 by the Environment Agency for polluting the river. Earlier this year it was also fined £3.3m after admitting it killed more than 1,400 fish by discharging untreated sewage. The problem is that with annual profits of around £2bn they can easily absorb such fines.
The Lib Dem’s – who rightly describe the whole thing as “horrifying”, and a “crime against the environment” – are demanding the following:
- That the era of water firms putting profit before the environment must come to an end.
- That these horrifying revelations are proof that Thames Water needs to be ripped up. It is outrageous that Conservative Ministers continue to sit on their hands and let Thames Water get away with this. The government is standing idly by whilst our rivers are poisoned and water firm execs pocket millions.
- These water firms are committing environmental crimes which are destroying our rivers and wildlife habitats, all whilst pocketing eye-watering sums of money.
- What is most shocking is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. With almost every sewage monitor unable to measure the litres of sewage discharged, this figure is likely to enter the trillions. Water firms are fitting monitors which simply aren’t up to the job and hide the true horrors of their filthy sewage habits.
- The government should force Thames Water to install new monitors which measure the volume of sewage discharged, so we can find the areas which need saving the most from this awful act.”
- Local Lib Dem MP slams “environmental crime” and demands Thames Water is “ripped up” to form new company.
These are all completely legitimate demands but they miss out the issue of ownership, which is the key issue. Whist there has long been problems of water supply and water quality the problems we are witnessing today are a direct result of the Tory privatisation of water in 1989. According the campaigning group We Own IT 68% of Tory voters want water to be nationalised.
It is also scandalous, give the scale of the problem, that the Labour leadership remains oppose to bring water into public ownership if they win the election next year, arguing that it would cost too much money. Though what price they put on the health and biodiversity our rivers, water ways, and beaches is far from clear.
Alan Thornett, November 14 2023.
