The authors of a report cataloguing the decline of prosecutions by the Environment Agency have called on government to remove red tape that prevents the agency from carrying out its obligations.
The report from the Salmon and Trout Conservation group (S&TC), an NGO that last week threatened Defra with legal action, called for the abolition of self-monitoring by operators in favour of increased monitoring by the EA or installation of continuous monitoring equipment.
S&TC said charges should be increased for those the EA seeks to regulate and the agency’s principle of the polluter paying should be applied to a degree that truly reflects the environmental costs of pollution.
The report further suggested amending current legislation to allow the EA to operate “unencumbered by deregulatory, overly business-friendly, or pure economic growth agendas”.
Chief executive of S&TC, Nick Measham, told Utility Week it was with a heavy heart the group produced the report.
“Let’s be clear about this, the Environment Agency is a victim of circumstance,” Measham said. “It should have a very simple job: to protect the environment. We already have the laws we need to do that but is it is starved of resources and hobbled by various government directives that it mustn’t be unduly harsh on economic interests.”
The report called for sufficient funding and staffing to be provided to the EA to allow it to carry out comprehensive monitoring of the water environment and to reinstate unannounced and frequent inspections of all discharges and farms. It said the regime of inspections should “create sufficient deterrent to would-be polluters”.
The EA, which turned 25 this month, came under fire last week at an Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) hearing in which former staff criticised the way the agency collected and analysed data relating to sewer overflows. It said current monitoring was ineffective and an alternative system was readily available but had not been adopted.
S&TC similarly concluded that monitoring efforts by the EA only gave a limited picture of what was happening in rivers. Measham said S&TC was looking for “really clear cases of illegal CSO discharges” to investigate further and consider legal action.
“Ofwat needs to be told by government to allow water companies to invest in infrastructure, so the focus has to switch from an obsession with lower and lower water bills to one where the concerns of the consumer are shared with the issues the environment faces,” Measham added. “This reset requires government to have the courage to say bills are not going to fall and tell Ofwat to mandate investment to solve the problem of chronic underinvestment.”
The group is also working with NGOs in Wales to address similar issues relating to under resourced environmental protections.
“The guardians of the environment have been run down and starved of funds for decades and we are getting the results of that,” Measham added.