I wrote to Anglian Water – see below in blue – and they responded very quickly.
How do you think I should reply?
Good morning Mr Avery
Thank you for your contact and your request for information regarding sewage discharges into watercourses.
Our Manager of Quality Regulation and Enforcement has advised that Storm overflows (also referred to in the media as combined sewer overflows or (CSOs) are decades, if not hundreds of years old.
They do play an important role in protecting homes and businesses from flooding, but the spotlight is increasingly falling on them, and the perception of the damage they do to the environment. The purpose of these overflows is to act as a relief valve during storms and heavy downpours of rain. Here is a video explaining how they work, https://youtu.be/-7M1XoPZAuQ currently storm overflow spills make up 0.3% of the water and sewage we process every year.
Developers do not build houses and sewer networks like this anymore however we understand that this legacy infrastructure is an antiquated system for the modern world. I’d like to assure you we have much investment and activity underway as well as significant plans to reduce spills further in future and we have already removed 13% of storm overflows in our region since privatisation of the sector, and we are continuing to remove them with investment, and to reduce spills at the same time.
The water sector accounts for approximately 24% of quality issues in England’s rivers. With other sectors, including farming, housing and transport accounting for the remaining 76%. Meaning we can’t do this alone. The reality is we also need the help of farmers, and landowners as well as government and regulators to reduce things like run-off from fields and roads, preventing sediment and excess amounts of nutrients like phosphates from getting into our rivers.
We are currently investing £200 million between 2020 and 2025 to do just this. Last year (2022), our work to reduce spills was realised with a 54% reduction in total spill duration and saw us meet our 2025 target early by reducing average spills per storm overflow to below 20. The average number of spills finished at 15 – the lowest in the industry. It meant that our storm overflows spilled for 1% of 2022. That is still 1% too much, and we acknowledge that one year does not mean the job is complete.
Recognising the need to act on the public’s concerns and go further, Anglian Water have proposed £1 billion of investment from 2025 to 2030 to tackle them further. This is subject to approval by our regulator, Ofwat, as part of its review of our future business plan.
For this reason, it’s also imperative that we invest in other environmental improvements too – such as reducing the amount of water we take from sensitive environments. While this gets much, much less airtime with campaigners and the media, it is the single biggest contribution we as water companies can make to the protection and enhancement of the environment. Through our investments, we will leave 85 million litres per day extra in the environment by 2025 – ultimately it is actions like this that will ensure good ecological quality in the future.
If you go to our website at https://www.anglianwater.co.uk/ and go to the environment page which is across the top you can read about our River Health and many more projects as well as storm overflows.
I hope this is of help to you and if there’s anything else I can help with please don’t hesitate to call me on 01522 341 418 between 8am and 4pm Monday to Friday, where I’ll be happy to help.
Alternatively, if it is more convenient you can contact me through our WhatsApp service, scanning the QR Code below, or add us into your WhatsApp contacts using this number 01522 341343. You can also use our ‘Contact Us’ page on our website to start a WhatsApp conversation.
Kindest regards
Dear Anglian Water,
I’m a customer of yours. Each year you send me a new bill for the year ahead and I glance at it, shrug, and you collect my money by direct debit.
This year, you and I are going to have a little chat about that bill because I will be looking at it very carefully and deciding whether I want to pay it all or not.
So that we can start having this conversation, please direct me to any publicly available information that will allow me to assess where you stand compared with other water suppliers and sewage disposers with respect to your environmental performance on sewage discharges into watercourses.
Please provide me with any other environmental information that you think will make me delighted and pleased to be a customer of yours.
I’ll be posting this letter on my blog and distributing it through social media and I’ll do something similar with your reply.
many thanks,
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