River sampling to help local activists save Lake Windermere
The role of data in freshwater conservation
WildFish and local activist, Matt Staniek, have launched a Windermere Smar...
The Government’s Strategic Policy Statement (SPS) for water has been laid before Parliament today.
The report urges water companies to do more to protect the environment which simply isn’t enough and fails to tackle the urgency with which change is required.
Alongside the Angling Trust, Wildfish (formerly Salmon & Trout Conservation) produced Time to Fix the Broken Water Sector – a major report that concluded Government need to be demanding water companies to do more to protect the environment, not simply urging them to.
Guy Linley-Adams, Solicitor for WildFish, said:
“Irrespective of what the SPS says, the law is the law and has been since 1991. The water companies must treat their sewage and make it harmless and innocuous before effluent is discharged.
That is the legal duty on the water companies. If they fail to do that, then OFWAT can and should enforce that duty, as it has been able to do since the Water Industry Act 1991 became law thirty years ago.
But let’s not pretend here that the solution lies anywhere else but with DEFRA.
This is about political will.
Either the Minister decides to tell OFWAT to stop sewage pollution of our rivers, including making sure that storm overflows only operate after exceptional rainfall, or she continues the pretence of seeming to act, while actually not doing very much at all, and the water companies continue to run riot as they have done over recent years”.
The Government’s Strategic Policy Statement can be found here.
Key findings from the Time to Fix the Broken Water Sector report are highlighted below.
The role of data in freshwater conservation
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