Untreated sewage dumped into England rivers and seas doubles in 2023
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- Опубликовано: 26 мар 2024
- The latest Environment Agency data on how much untreated sewage is being dumped into rivers and seas across England makes grim reading.
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In 2023, a total of over 3.6 million hours of outflows were recorded - that's double what it was the year before.
It's partly down to a very rainy year, and partly due to the fact that for the first time 100 percent of overflows are now being monitored.
We asked to speak to Water UK - the body that represents the water companies - and the government but no one was made available.
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This is privatisation in action.
You can thank Margaret Thatcher for that she privatised everything that was important in Britain, that's why we all pay through the nose for Utilities ,Public travel Post and telephones. Tories ruined Britain and wont stop until its destroyed and they have the barefaced cheek to call themselves Conservatist's, asset strippers would be more accurate.
the most truth of truths
& a government that is happy to allow it. These Corps have legal obligation to their shareholders to make a profit. It's on the gov to protect us, not them.
Privatised into a monopoly, english customers have no choice but to be ripped off by the water companies.
Get them to pay back the 60 billion they took out in dividends over the last 30 years before they put our bills up
Fat chance!
People keep voting for this. tory propaganda media controlled by billionaires. We need change.
We've spent that on importing the 3rd world and housing them. The rest went to Ukraine
@@kurtgodel5236of course, they will say they need to increase bills to “modernise” the system.
They got the cheek to say they wont cough up the initial half a billion. Private companies have impunity in the uk especially under its front mens the Tories
This is disgusting. But it just about sums up a country where nothing works properly and where greed is rampant. Sad and shameful.
United Kingdom of China vs Londonistan, who takes over? You decide. Vote now
A banana republic truly
Greed, price of privatisation
Yummy now we competing with china's gutter oil
exactly... i say double down on the toxic waste and just call it a day
Britain... prices like Switzerland, sewage like Albania...
I think you've mistakenly used the word 'Britain' when you mean England. In Scotland water is in public ownership and I'd have no qualms drinking water directly from my local river.
@@donaldurquhart8092 That's a fair and important point. I often visit my home town Edinburgh and am very confident in the water.
@@donaldurquhart8092 yeah great point, English water sucks.
🎉
70% are foreign owned. It doesn't effect them.
Feargal Sharkey is absolutely 100% spot-on. Hold the water companies and shareholders responsible. It's completely absurd that water should be a privatized utility.
Open sewer Britain. Brown flag beaches. What a way to run a country.
England and Wales.
Price of privatisation, rationalise asap
@@jonathankennedy1715 Fine them broke then nationalise it for free.
It’s an absolute disgrace
It's typically British !
Plebs voted for the Tories consecutively and brexit this spillage is nothing
@@gmanlee575 sorry, shouldn’t worry about it then
@@TimeForJesus. yep we in managed decline mode should feel lucky we can even flush the toilets
If there's a way of making this country these numpties in parliament are all over it
Make the country better? Not interested
The less they treat sewage the bigger the profits and dividends...
Higher their debt then tax payer bails then out as usual
The sewage has increased due to third world migration
Take Action. Refuse/Delay paying your water bill. Get off your knees.
Never had one😮
I've said our country has turned into a third eord country .
There you go there's the proof
8bmillion extra people in our tiny little island all pooing its yo much strain on our sewers ??
And?
Are you going to pay for people's fines or consequences of having a bad credit score, very easy to say these things armchair warrior
@@gmanlee575 yes and the more people say these things, the more people do these things. The concept of a credit score needs to go too along with every other way people collect information on the masses and use it to exploit.
Do the Tories actually do anything? They seem to be extremely good at doing absolutely sweet F.A
Did you vote Tory?
The corrupt elite look after the wealthy elite, ordinary people not so much
@@larrydickman5936The corrupt and wealthy scumbags look after each other
@@HungryOctopus unsurprisingly, no. I voted Labour
@@larrydickman5936 I absolutely agree 👍
I don't get it people should be going to prison not getting a massive bonus and a gentle slap on the wrist . PRIVATISATION IS GREAT WORKS EVERY TIME FOR SHARE HOLDERS AND GOVERNMENT BACKHANDERS.
It's the same story every time. Privatisation initially results in an uptick in quality as startup capital pours in, but eventually it always leads to an endless search for profit and growth, which leads to cutting corners and dodgy semi-legal practises, until the business collapses and taken back in by the public
But of course it makes *some* people a lot of money in the short term, which is all most of ruling class really cares about
Every body should not pay there water bills they cannot cut people off and how much they charge people for water its disgusting
I 100% concur.
We have been paying water bills since They have been privatised and they have done nothing with the money what we paid them apart from paying the shareholders. They should have their license took off and put back into public.hand
Too true. And be fined for not doing the job they've been paid for?😮
@@user-wc2xf3fj6lAnd the fines are added to the bills.
Not only that.. They've loaded the companies with tens of billions of debt!
They're taking the same approach as the banks - "too big to fair, vital utility" - they think they can do whatever they want without any consequence, running the company into the ground only for the tax payer to pick up the bill. The Government will eventually take over, reimburse shareholders, then expect tax payers to pay to upgrade the infrastructure and once that's complete they'll hand it bac over to the private sector to destroy again.
Well, start to cut and clawback the millions paid in bonuses to the incompetent ceos and shareholders and sack them all.
So a lot of the dividends have been to foreign shareholders, such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. Has the loan-based dividends are legal, those money will not be coming back.
Other shareholders are UK pension funds, which took greedy gambles, but are still peoples pensions. Do you think it will do England a ton of good if the Universities Superannuation Scheme is tanked and scientists, doctors etc. starts migrating to higher paid positions in the states or elsewhere to have a chance at recouping their pensions?
It's nothing new, 30 years ago my daughter then a toddler became very ill after paddling in the sea at Porthmadog. When we go to Bangor hospital she was put on a drip, a Doctor asked if she had been in the sea, there were other victims.
Back then sewage in seas and rivers was lack of investment, today it's pure greed.
disgusting!!!!!!
Change the law, the fine is so small. I know someone who works in industrial cleanup and the water discharge is a loophole. They even fitted early warning alarms for them but now they just dump when those go off instead of being reactive with tanking it out which is expensive. Criminals.
Wake up people, stop paying for water bills. You are not contractually obliged to pay these greedy corporate businesses, who obviously don't look after the environment, they just look after their own pockets. If you haven't signed on the dotted line, which none of us have done, then you don't owe them a penny.
There hasn’t been a need for a ‘wet signature’ for years. The water companies terms are such that by using their product you have agreed to their terms. If you have paid them any money it proves you have accepted their terms.
Thank you for covering this
Water companies are squeezing profits and not investing.
The goverment / regulators dont do anything. And expect them to act responsibly.
Disgusting.
The government and regulators are in bed with the water companies.
The fix to this is to increase bills and pay shareholders more
And not do the work. So situation normal.
What a lovely fair syste
Why didn’t channel 4 push back on WHY failing water companies are PAYING OUT RECORD PROFITS at the expense of environmental collapse???? Come on man PUSH BACK!
Dont rock the ..Boat ! Dont push back,! Dont expose corruption,! Govt or Private, & Heaven forbid DONT point Fingers Where Needed or Toes.....Shamelessly Discracefull...!?!?
Didn't have this problem a few years back!!.
This has been a problem for decades, but little to nothing has been done to prevent this. What a disgrace.
Yes we did. It’s also getting worse now
Yes we certainly have!
The piece litterally mentions a EU court judgement aginst the English government lack of regulatory oversight from 2012....
Because we're full as a country maybe....
the only swimming i will do is in the swimming pool, the water companies should be in prison
People pee in the pool though. And little kids drop their dukes in there sometimes 💩🏊
@@jamessmith84240It's like comparing champagne to cat p1ss.
Why do you think Sunak has his own swimming pool doesn't want his family swimming around the British coastline and can't allow his children to visit a local swimming pool where they might meet working class people.
But the swimming pool is chlorinated too a really high degree to deal with that, unlike rivers@@jamessmith84240
EU has the strictest water purity laws in the world. Must be one of the laws the UK scrapped when they took back control
People in Venice tell you that most sewage goes directly into the canals without treatment.
This isn't a new problem. It happened the entire time we were in the EU
@@samuelloification2749and, as the video stated, the EU took us to court in 2012 to force us to improve our waters. But now we’ve left the EU, we no longer have them to rely on.
@@OllieX123 what were we relying on? Nothing improved before or after we were taken to court by the EU. Great, the EU said we were breaking the law and nothing got improved. Water companies still are breaking UK law, Water companies are taken to court and fined now when there is a pollution. It's made no difference whether we were in the EU or not they were not regulating our water companies.
@@samuelloification2749 we were relying on their incentives, since clearly national incentives have been essentially empty.
The hard truth is water companies aren’t gonna change unless they are incentivised. The EU doesn’t have the power to physically force governments to create incentives, they can only do this financially such as through fines.
So this is what they did. But we decided we’d prefer to leave the EU rather than hold our government accountable to preventing further fines.
25 extra years to fix the problem that he claims we have been dealing with for 60 years and he personally has been working on for five years so far and it's only got worse. Hope he remembered that at current rates, there could be extra 25 million people in the UK in 25 years. Thats more than 2 times the current entire population of London sewage that we will need to treat and dispose of EVERY DAY. But they have planned for all of that right?
Yes not only has London sewage been thought about. An erking big sewer has Just been opened carrying London sewage to a treatment plant in the east.
Sure, it might take 25 years to build a storm drain system which is separated from the sewage system on a national scale.
But come on, surely major improvements could be made in just 5 years. If someone actually cared.
They really don't care.
the Conservative Government with Thatcher sold England's ' water by the 1989 Water Act it raised £7.63 Billion for the Treasury. Thames Water alone ( worst job I ever had!) has paid out £7.2 Billion sin dividends since then. In 2016 98.5% beaches passed minimum EU standards . How many today?
EU standards? We don’t want those pesky foreign euro types making our laws!!🏴
Another Tory caused issue to add the many.
Labour won't seriously attempt to fix though. Rachel Reeves has made it clear Labour will be friend of big business.
@@davidadiwego4608England is done. Finished. Shall it take the rest of the Union down with it?
@@tubecated_development Riiight, 'cause Wales is a roaring success?
@@davidadiwego4608 Wales got its Brexit benefits. But, the UK government (AKA England) determines overall public expenditure and thus the size of the Welsh Government's budget
Replace Conservative with British Government - and you have a point.
Bet the CEOs got healthy bonuses and eye watering pensions!!!
All while MPs looked away!!
Private Water Companies 1989: "What a shambles nationalized water is. Give this to us, we'll put it right. We're super efficient!"
Private Water Companies 2024: "Give us more money or we'll kill all the rivers."
So true
Now the English can't make fun of the Ganges River.
Companies that provide any type of public service should by law be made to provide an adequate service to the public, with any maintenance or repairs being paid for out of profits before any dividends are paid to shareholders.
Same with the energy companies, we've all been paying higher taxes and higher bills for the sake of future, greener energy. Now they want more?
Bring the full force of the law, and apply it fully. Where's our money? Why aren't these people in prison? Why is the government not fully supporting and funding the watchdogs?
How is it that we have all just been turned into cash-cows for the greedy, lazy elite?
Privately owned utility businesses and their regulators seem to be partnerships. That would explain this sort of problem.
i live in a state with a main waterway that used to catch fire annually, so i can't point fingers, but--well, i think you fellas ought not to accept this.
love always,
the Americans
You can re-use that and serve it as British food, nobody will notice the difference.
Arguably, it may be even better ...
What the f#ck would you know? 😮
That British food is especially bad is a myth. Personal/national preference/taste doesn't count; e.g. escargot/calamari/grubs/crickets? British food is hardly culinarily unique either.
Easter Lamb roast dinner soon! Also featuring curly kale, long-stem broccoli, crispy roast potatoes, swede & carrot mash, yorkshire puddings, stuffing, all drizzled in gravy made with lamb and veg juices. A delicious, wholesome Brit's meal.
Better than some disgusting curry 🤢🤢🤢
We have enviromental laws. Why aren't water company exec's being prosecuted? If i dump rubbish i would be prosecuted
**me cancelling my water direct debit**
Why would we sell off our water supply to foreign companies?
this is totally unacceptable . Needs to be fix immediately
Put Feargal Sharkey in charge. Sorted.
STOP VOTING TORIES
He thinks Labour will be any different LOL
Is Labour going to nationalize? Did Rachel Reeves say she'll be tough towards big business or friendly?
Q 1 = no
Q 2 = friendly
@zapre2284 you're completely crazy if you want this to continue. You'll be run to your knees
@@zapre2284Did I say that you stupid AI generated troll?
Keep going Fergal !!!
This shows the water authority have failed. On Good Friday the south west say our reservoirs are nearly full. Nearly, after all the rain we have had, this is crazy. In the west the authority has stopped for many years the clearing of streams and other smaller water ways which feed our reservoirs to save money for the shareholders. This means instead of filling reservoirs and catchment tanks it is overflowing into our drainage systems. Purely the incompetence of the authorities which must be in breach of their regulations. In the UK our rainfall if managed correctly is sufficient for the manageable population. If population rises over this figure, that is the failure of governments.
The Water Regulator stated today "That Water Bills have been too low, and because of this, did not Allow? Water Companies, to Invest in its Infrastructure"
Share holders dividends??
We were told privatisation would bring private capital. They have taken too much out in profits.
So put it back via a rights issue!
@@johnrussell3961 They state it will require Billions more than the cost of Londons new Pipeline, going live in a few months.
16 Miles cost £50 Billion!
They make around £250 million a year? They should put some of those yearly profitst to the side? You know, for a rainy day? Government will bail them out. Using OUR money? No deal but!
2007 to 2017 water companies took 60 Billion after tax . 75% of British water companies are owned by Americans .
The Environment Agency (the government ran agency) has turned a blind eye to pollution because it’s big business and money 💵💵.
Any small business or farm that accidentally pollutes is prosecuted by the Environment Agency and could face imprisonment.
Yet the EA have failed to notice pollution on a daily basis, on an industrial scale, in dry weather conditions 😳😳??
It’s like paying for your bins to be emptied
Only to find the company who does it is fly tipping it in the field down the road.
Good old Feargal
Top man!
He’s like a dog with a bone.
The companies have their priorities backwards when they care more about shareholders than the environment. What a disgrace, those profits should be spent on cleaning up the damage they’ve inflicted on the environment. They shouldn’t be allowed to operate or claim any profits until they do.
If we don’t bring companies to account this will only get worse and there won’t be a world worth living in.
'...but no-one was available'. But there's never anyone available when there are awkward questions to be answered! Basic #1 corporate image survival techniques!
4:25 record rainfall!? Stop spraying the fookin skies then!
They’re all just talking. NOTHING is ever done except protecting companies. The public is only ever an afterthought.
I use to be on the board for a water company for a fairly big city here in Sweden 30 years ago. We almost had no houses with combined sewer and rain water pipes and it was high priority to find and fix them. I was just single houses built very long time ago but fixing this was a priority. Overflow by rainstorms was never a problem but the cost and effort to clean also rainwater is high and you are not having a system that can focus on maximise cleaning...but hansle overflows.
To have any spill of any spill of sewer water shoukd be seen as exceptional and a catastrophic event. Not in Britain???
The money has gone on profits and dividends, instead of infrastructure
Privatisation of all the essential industries has been an abject disaster. Anything short of full renationalisation would be shameful.
HERE WE GO....You should have voted Corbyn!
Feargal sharkey, well said!
We’ve all been taken for a big expensive ride.
Only the shareholders are happy.
Make them pay. We already have but have in our high bills since privatisation of water!
We pay for this ? I complained but was put on a carrousel ride !! Stop Charging for Shat service ,
This the tory legacy..corruption and compliance..
Two wings of the same bird. British Government. Baaaaaa.
Private making a fortune, then public will pickup the bill.
As a chairman of a sewer authority in Pennsylvania, I can see a few sides in this. One is the reporters, one is the general public being concern, Greens flipping in GLEE over this, the companies getting marching orders from stock holders, the stock holders, the enforcement agency, the elected officials , and the customers. 1. enforcement agency my have reduced fines or gave none for a plan to invest to solve the problem, I have seen it work over here in the US. 2. elected officials, what can I say to help get me elected again. 3. customers- still screwed even if the stock holders are forced to pay the 71 billion pounds in dividends they got since the 1980's.4 Reporters- this is great for a story and lets try to make someone slip up. 5 stock holders- forget any dividends or the stock price. 6 general public- just remember people are cowards and they will try to pass this hot potato along and hope that you forget. 7. the Greens, never let an opportunity to make a name for yourself go to waste and if it solved quickly it is an opportunity lost
The spokesman said this problem has been with us for sixty years and No government has sorted this out. Well 35 years ago they privatised the water to raise investment to do just that. But little work on infrastructure whilst 6 billion paid out to shareholders.
The Tories have cut regulations. Cut funding to the Environment Agency. Remember Liz Truss was head of the EA which showed how she cares for people. Cut inspections not just on sewage but on farm discharges. (15 years ago a farm could expect to be inspected once every two years. Now it’s down to once in over 200 years! At a time when animals are being put into giant sheds and their waste finding its way into rivers. And it’s the same with industrial discharges)
So privatisation, deregulation, paying bonuses based on share dividends instead of performance has all led to this.
But they (politicians, companies executives and shareholders) don’t care. They get richer and fly abroad to swim in the Caribbean, they aren’t swimming amongst the sh£& on our beaches. 🤬🤬
The UK never stops surprising us ! The UK has pledged almost £12 billion in overall support to Ukraine since February 2022, of which £7.1 billion is for military assistance. £2.3 billion was provided in each of the financial years 2022/23 and 2023/24 and on 12 January 2024, the Government announced a further £2.5 billion of funding for 2024/25......
If the water companies spent some of the money they collect in bills rather than overpaying board members and holding onto profit to boost their share prices, we'd have less pollution and a healthier ecogolical environment.
Nationalise nationalise. These privateers have taken out more dividends than actually investing in the country.
Minister, have we also decided that investments and loans taken on by water companies won't be handed out as dividends to shareholders or excessive bonuses to executives any more. The "criminal" diversion of investment over many years is basically the cause of the current woeful performance of these companies.
Truss let the UK sewage works owned by Indian companies drop their standards -for money to the Tories.
Surprised they haven't set up a contract to feed the ulysium sneakers! They like curry don't they. Last time I tried samalian food you'd never notice the difference! 😮
The Government- "Damn you Mother Nature". Pathetic.
We have to stop these private companies from stripping profits over what they are actually meant to be doing!
Just tell the water company’s that you no longer put your waste water or toilet waste
down there drains and that you put it in drums and tip it into the sea and rivers so do not bill me for it .And when the water company’s get fined why don’t the people who pay water bills get a rebate on there bill instead
World class, again. Put Mr Sharkey in charge, if he'll accept...
My parents were like “we just flicked it out the way” they seem to believe that it is acceptable
Tory Brexit dividends!
I remember years ago our beaches were the worst in Europe and they had a massive clean up campaign and they improved. But in the last decade or so we have literally gone back and past square one!!!! They have paid billions in dividends for years and here we are.
Saying that successive govts. have failed to sort this out may be true, but wasn't the water privatised??? Wtf does privatisation mean, if not taking over the running of the industry? This is a sad and unfunny joke
Criminals poisoning our rivers, our streets, our people, evil is killing this land
What hilarious is that all these water companies, combined with all the other things we have to pay hard earned money for. And not the water companies nor our government can get there s**t together. But they certainly are efficient at taking our money.
A good spokesperson for the British public these days is a brilliant find
Failure of privatisation as with trains, fuel, utilities get them all renationalised
CRIMINALS! This is beyond disgusting. They must be held accountable. Prison time should not be out the picture.
Pity Channel 4 is the only DECENT TV broadcaster in the UK.
Do you think a million extra adults every 2 years might have something to do with it?
Get these tories out. The water should have never been privatised in the first place. Thatcher is responsible for most of the country’s problems.
It’s just not acceptable and disgraceful . Maybe stop paying our water bill until they sort the problem out. I’ll bet it would be done ASAP
Wild swimming anyone or how about some Gastroenteritis.
We'll. If that's how they treat our rivers! What exactly is the quality of our drinking water? Sh#te! 😮
😂
Thanks for your comments Homie. I am sure you are right regarding conventional recovery plants. I am not sure the same applies where purification system uses activated sludge little information seems available. Regarding the bigger picture about pollutiionn very few know the real number of discharges on a river catchment.
The guest is trying to deflect talking about how this problem has been going onm for 60 years. 10-15 years ago you could look from a bridge over many of England's rivers and see fish. Now you see none. Somethings changed more recently.
That's what happens when Thames Water is no longer owned by British.
And the shareholders refuse to invest to keep the companies afloat because they see a government buyout as easy money
Worse thing is the spreading of contaminated sewage sludge on farmland ,which is then used to grow food.
All these new visitors building up the all the shi*****
can't mention that
Absolutely shocking the damage these idiots are doing will be irreversible
I wrote to my MP on this. There's just tiny niggley monitoring and distant targets. In other words, this will continue indefinitely under this government and I don't see Labour improving it greatly.
isnt it illegal to dump any at all? how did it get this bad?
"Maybe you should focus on getting your current assets working properly". Was the content of an email response back in 2014 by an Australian Engineer on secondment to the privatised water company that took over North East Water. It was in response to the "Vision of the future with Water Factories generating energy from waste and feeding the electricity and gas grid with huge potential profits" By that stage the Australian Engineer with 30 years of experience in wastewater management was fed up with the distractions and diversions and excuses and was ready to go home. He was a troublemaker in any case. He had the temerity to insist that essential works necessary to maintain systems were implemented. Kept raving on about stupid things like responsibility and integrity. 10 Years on.. What were you expecting? Little note to Phillip. Australia has storm events too. We rarely have spill overs as we installed a series of emergency storages to cope. You are being told a pack of lies.
Let’s face it England , you get what you pay for. Back in the 70s / 80s it was well known that our water system needed investment but neither party were able to because of the English pathological obsession with low taxation and not investing in our future. If Labour had funded long term Government investment then the Tories would have accused them of not being able to manage public finances and raising taxes. The Tories scammed us with the idea that privatisation would solve the problem and New Labour ( and Blair ) failed to call it out for fear of a reaction from the electorate. We are a divided nation where our two party system encourages warfare rather than long term cooperation. Our basic systems of water / rail / roads / NHS / education have pathetically become political footballs. Proportional Representation forces parties to cooperate and work together. Other countries like Germany / France / Holland do far better than us on their infrastructure because they don’t fight each other over certain issues and they understand the “ you get what you pay for “ principle. In reality it’s up to us. We need an election where all of us refuse to vote until they change the system. There are people in this country who will spend their whole lives voting but their vote will never make any difference ( due to living in a “ safe seat “ area) . Change our voting system and you will change the face of this country forever. We need to figure out a way of working together to solve these LONG term issues and have the guts to pay for them. Short term Party politics have got us into this mess , they won’t get us out of it
My dream is to one day visit the English Lake district and swim in the open water. Does this means it is no longer safe?
yes
Every British utility company in 2024: well yes we're in a recession and cost of living crisis, and yes our bills are insanely high, and yes we have billions in profit a year, but we simply don't have enough to do any of the things we said we would, so we need to raise the bills more to do these things (we promise we actually will this time, u can trust us)
What a well run country we live in
Like our water bills.sic.corruption here almost has bad has gov
Keegan, Minister MP wife of the Fujitsu UK Chief during the Postmasters scandal. The same people keep cropping up, or their relatives.
We had filthy water in the seventies and eighties, unusable beaches,polluted rivers and canals. Then the European law forced us to clean it all up. Lo and behold, we leave Europe and almost instantly we have poo everywhere again. Not really a coincidence is it.
The U.K. could do away with 50% of its sewerage systems in housing areas.
Open bottom soakaways are the answer. Set to a certain depth within the boundaries of each property.
This works very well in many countries and is no harm to anyone.