Utility Week

28 | FEBRUARY 2022 | UTILITY WEEK Water Analysis Polluters will be made to pay If 2021 was the year that pollution in rivers hit the headlines, 2022 could be the year that the sector begins making meaningful changes. Ruth Williams reports. T he year kicked off with a comprehen- sively damning report from the Envi- ronmental Audit Committee (EAC) following its inquiry into river water qual- ity in England. Mounting public pressure brought the water environment into sharp focus in 2021 culminating with legislation in the Environment Act for far greater monitor- ing of combined sewer overflows (CSOs). The EAC's Water Quality in Rivers report set out a catalogue of failures by water com- panies, regulators and government over sev- eral decades that contributed to the current poor health of the country's waterways. In it, the EAC said it wanted to see Ofwat and the Environment Agency (EA) sharpen their respective claws and recommended they levy penalties on pollution breaches to ensure pollution remains on the agenda from board level down. This included urg- ing Ofwat to limit bonuses to company executives if they fail to drive down pollu- tion incidents, as well as calling on the EA to ensure prosecutions are brought more swi†ly against offenders. The EAC launched its inquiry into river health in December 2020 a†er an EA report uncovered incidents of CSOs being used out- side periods of heavy rainfall. It found that no river in England was free from chemical pollution, and this led to a swell of public interest – and disapproval. Following multiple evidence sessions last year, the committee's report has rec- ommended that Ofwat explores its powers to limit the payment of annual bonuses to water company executives until there are no longer major or persistent permit breaches. Philip Dunne, chair of the EAC, said the incoming chief executive and chair of the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), have indicated that this might be an area they will look at. However, he says, because of the inde- pendent nature of the OEP, the EAC has not made recommendations to the newly formed body. "We are starting to see it seep into the active management of water company boards," Dunne remarks. "We have talked about the need for water company boards to consider their bonus awards for senior exec- utives where there are persistent breaches of regulations, which is quite emotive." Multiple failures The investigation pointed to "multiple potential points of failure in the regula- tory arrangements for monitoring, govern- ance and enforcement of water quality". It said the high-profile case of Southern Water raised "obvious and urgent" questions about the use of operator self-monitoring leading to misreporting. The EAC said it could not discount the possibility that similar practices have been going on at other water compa- nies but have not been detected. The report called for an urgent review by the EA into how it audits the self-monitoring of wastewater treatment works and said the agency should reduce the amount of time it takes to prosecute a water company a†er detection of a permit breach. It also suggested a review of the sentenc- ing guidelines for water pollution offences and said penalties should be high enough to ensure that relevant risk assessments relat- ing to pollution are routinely on the agenda for every water company board. The investigation heard that the EA lacked the resources and technical capabili- ties to properly monitor overflows and inci- dents of permit breaches. The EAC advised the agency to overhaul its approach to monitoring to utilise avail- able technologies and citizen scientists. It said the EA should develop in-house capac- ity or hold tenders for external assistance to undertake analysis of data from event dura- tion monitors (EDMs) and modernise its monitoring technology to be able to "rapidly introduce cost-efficient and effective sensors at an increased number of locations". Under the Environment Act, water com- panies will be required to publish data from EDMs, which record when CSOs have dis- charged into waterways. Dunne says this is the first step in trying to fix the problem: "What we now need to see is the regulator step up and take action where there are persistent breaches and dis- charges. For too long they have either wished these away, not had the resources to identify

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