Welsh Water has been called out by Ofwat’s chief executive David Black for being “far less ambitious” than English water companies on reducing spills from sewer overflows.
The company, which operates more than 2,500 overflows, has installed monitors and created a prioritised plan to tackle spills based on their impact.
However, Black said the plan lacks ambition adding that the regulator is “concerned don’t really have a plan that’s going to deliver meaningful reductions by 2030″.
Last year, data from event duration monitors (EDMs) at Welsh’ 1,946 permitted overflows showed 49% spilled for more than 50 hours.
The company dedicated £140 million to improve CSOs between 2020-2025 and has a further £420 million planned from 2025 to 2030. The company identified locations that posed higher environmental risks and those adjacent to bathing waters as priority sites.
Black made the comments before the Senedd’s environment committee to respond to questions about pollution from wastewater. Representatives from Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and Welsh Water were also grilled.
Welsh Water chief executive Peter Perry defended the company’s track record of problems, adding that only 6% of its overflows have issues.
He said: “With an imperfect infrastructure you’re always going to find things, but we’ve always had a policy of being open and transparent. If we find those problems, we flag them and work with Natural Resources Wales to deal with them.”
He denied the company had ever dealt with problems “in an underhand way” and always works with the regulatory bodies, describing “a well-known and trod path” to share problems and issues when they are discovered.
“This is not going to be a quick fix,” he said, “there are hundreds of kilometres of sewer mains that need to be replaced and that will take time.”
He praised the “Team Wales” approach and said the company worked closely with agriculture and regulators on both sides of the Wales/England border to monitor and improve water quality.
The committee queried why the company was measured in-line with Westminster targets instead of Senedd-set targets for impact rather than duration of spills.
Ministers also asked why the sewer infrastructure in Wales, which features a lot of smaller pipes than other parts of the country, should be measured by duration not volume when a spill from a small pipe would cause far less environmental impact than the same duration spill from a much bigger pipe.
Black admitted the system being applied was less than perfect, but regulators were finding the best way to target efforts to lower impact from spills using the monitoring currently in place.
Welsh Water recently announced Cardigan sewage treatment works would be rebuilt after saline intrusion from the sea into the network had caused pollution problems. The company informed NRW and agreed a set of actions that ultimately did not work and rebuilding the site was settled on.
The £20 million work is due to begin in 2025.