Water bosses should face ‘absolute accountability’ for dumping sewage in places like the River Mersey in south Manchester, including being sent to jail, a team of Greater Manchester MPs have suggested. Labour’s environment and rural affairs secretary, Jim McMahon, is backing the campaign to clean up the UK’s waterways.
It comes as shadow transport secretary Mike Kane, and shadow culture and tourism secretary, Jeff Smith, launched a scathing attack on the privatised water sector over volume of raw sewage dumped in rivers, lakes and the sea. Councillor Sarah Haughey, who represents Trafford’s Longford ward, said she regularly walks her dog along the banks of the Mersey.
“It is often covered in human waste. When the river has been high you can see sanitary towels, toilet roll, baby wipes and human faeces along the bank, and it stinks. It’s awful.”
Mr McMahon, who is also MP for Oldham West and Royton, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the issue was a ‘national scandal’. He said: “We believe a lot of this is about water management and that you can deal with this by effective sewage treatment within the existing network.
“We are calling for mandatory monitors, so we know the full scale of what’s taking place and how much is being dumped in our lakes, rivers and the sea. And [there should be] automatic fines.
"It is a nonsense that the environment agency had a 40 per cent budget cut for enforcement, but is then expected to take on more expensive protracted investigations. We think that the water companies should pay the second sewage is discharged into the bodies of water.
“And absolute accountability for water bosses. We can’t carry on with the water industry dumping and dumping but the only measure of success is how much they can derive in dividend payments to their shareholders. That will include custodial sentences for those who deliberately mislead, don’t provide the data, or even, in some cases, provide entirely misleading data about the true scale of what’s going on.”
Mike Kane, MP for Wythenshawe and Sale East, and Shadow Minister for Transport said: “Our rivers and getting worse and worse. As a child I used to cycle often down here to Sale Water Park in the days when you could do it unorganised. Round here there were rubbish tips, municipal sites and you were always warned not to go in the river.
“We were under the assumption that the river was getting cleaner but there is a situation where now there are discharges in my constituency alone of 200 hours of raw sewage last year. In Andrew's (Western’s in Stretford and Urmston) I think it was far worse a little bit further down.
“This is a complete scandal from [North West water company] United Utilities who are literally greenwashing everything they are doing, but dumping this rubbish. And it’s becoming a national campaign.”
MP for Manchester Withington, Jeff Smith, said: “This is a really important issue for us locally because of the disgusting state the river bank has been left in. This is a really big problem for our tourist industry.
“One of our biggest and undervalued industries is tourism. Talking to people in the South East last summer, they were really worried about the impact on their coastal resorts of the sewage problems. It’s not just a problem in the Mersey, but it is right across the country.”
The campaign is continuing regardless of United Utility's new chief executive Louise Beardmore pledging that £914 million is to be spent on the region's waterways.
A spokesperson said that [water regulator] Ofwat announced on Monday that it was able to bring forward £914m of investment so it can start work on 34 of the storm overflow projects in Greater Manchester worth more than £400m.
"In terms of Mersey catchment, it also means we can get started on projects at Sale and Stockport wastewater treatment works to improve the quality of the final effluent that is returned the environment and reduce the number of times that storm overflows operate," it said.
"There are also projects to reduce spills from eight storm overflows along the River Tame in Mossley, Hyde, Ashton and Dukinfield and four on Micker Brook in Cheadle and Bramhall that both flow into the Mersey."
The spokesperson continued: “We are committed to delivering a step change in performance. We set out to reduce the number of spills from storm overflows by at least one-third by 2025, compared to the 2020 baseline, and our performance in 2022 means we have already met that target. We know there is much more to be done.
"With the largest combined sewer network in the country and 28pc more rainfall in our region than the UK average, we have ambitious plans to deliver further improvements through one of the biggest environmental programmes in the country.
"The news that we can now start early on more than £900m of this investment will have region-wide benefits, reducing spills from storm overflows, creating jobs, and boosting the resilience of communities and the local environment.
“This builds on decades of previous improvements. We’re proud to have been a key partner in the Mersey Basin Campaign and since 1991 we have invested around £3bn in our assets and infrastructure to play our part in improving the water quality in the basin. The River Mersey is now home to more wildlife than at any time since the Industrial Revolution, and these improvements are set to continue.”
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