A government minister has defended new monitoring requirements for combined sewer overflows (CSOs) in the House of Lords after a fellow peer questioned why they do not cover the volume as well as the frequency of discharges.
Lord Benyon, parliamentary under-secretary at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), told the house the monitoring requirements introduced in the Environment Act last year are already sufficient as the harm caused by sewage discharges does not directly correlate to their volume.
Asked by Baroness Jones what plans the government had to require water companies to monitor the volume of sewage discharged into water courses, Lord Benyon replied: “The volume of storm overflow discharge is not directly proportional to its harm as the concentration of sewage in discharges depends on the volume of rainwater it is mixed with.
“Therefore, we have taken a more effective approach to place a duty on water companies in the Environment Act to directly monitor the impact of discharges on water quality upstream and downstream of overflows. This monitoring system will identify harm from storm overflows and ensure that water companies are held to account through enforcement action.”
He insisted the government was “not siding with the water companies” or ignoring the recommendations of the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) on monitoring devices, and will publish its storm overflows plan in September with details on monitoring.
The Environment Act included a requirement for water companies to attach monitoring devices to all CSO discharge points to determine the frequency at which they release. This must be completed by the end of next year and data gathered from the devices will inform the steps required to minimise the risk of harm to waterways.
Defra’s Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction plan sets expectations that by 2035 the most damaging overflows would have been eliminated.
Lord Benyon was also grilled on whether it is acceptable for water companies to award bonuses and dividends whilst pollution incidents continue on their networks, and if he had considered introducing monitoring requirements during his previous stint as a water minister between 2010 and 2013:
“What have government and the regulator been doing since then?”, asked Labour peer Lord Watts.
“Quite frankly, I think the regulator needs sacking and the minister needs sacking,” he remarked. “Perhaps if he brought my good friend Feargal Sharkey in as a regulator, things would happen.”
Lord Benyon said the government will clean up rivers and has “a plan to do it without raising bills to unaffordable levels”.
He went on to acknowledge the need for a joined-up approach to address pollution from agricultural run-off, particularly with regards to the River Wye, which runs across boundaries and must therefore be dealt with through cooperation with the Welsh authorities.
Lord Benyon also made the case for sector to remain privatised, saying the environment and water customers “would get the crumbs at the end of the queue” if it was re-nationalised.