The British government wants to reduce untreated waste water discharges into the sea to zero by 2050, announced the Minister for the Environment on Saturday 27 August. It is “revolutionizing our sewer systems”said George Eustice, interviewed by BBC 4 radio.
The minister assured that the current British government – which has only a few days left of its existence before the appointment of a successor to Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative party – was “the first to seriously tackle this issue”. “The reason why this decision has been pushed back by successive governments, both Labor and Conservative, for decades, is that we wanted to keep water bills low, and we can understand that”pleaded Mr. Eustice.
Huge investments needed
Water supply companies will have to invest 56 billion pounds (66 billion euros) to renovate sewage systems, according to a government plan presented on Friday. They will have to have renovated the pipes discharging near designated bathing areas by 2035, and at the latest in 2050 for the others. The additional cost for consumers by 2030 will be around 12 pounds (14 euros) per year per household, and 42 pounds (49.50 euros) by 2050.
George Eustice recalled that the 15,000 sewage pipes flowing into the sea today were “a legacy of Victorian infrastructure” of the XIXe century. Untreated wastewater can thus be discharged in large quantities; especially when the drainage systems are saturated by heavy rains, as happened last week. At the height of the summer season, many beaches in the United Kingdom were thus prohibited for swimming due to the health risk. The opposition Liberal Democrats called the government’s plan a “cruel joke” and estimated that there would still be 325,000 sewage discharges per year in 2030, into the sea, lakes or rivers.
On Friday, the president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, alerted the French government to these wastewater discharges, citing a ” ecological disaster “ which, according to him, has worsened since Brexit. The European Commission also said on Thursday that it would soon respond to complaints from MEPs on the subject.
