Crimes of Indifference

The insult against our rivers

Warning: I’m going to break my own rules with this one. The Long March seeks to avoid commentary on the Westminster Quadrille, it swerves establishment-politics as best it can, and above all it favours imagination and generosity over narcissistic anger. The market for that sort of thing is, I think, abundantly supplied.

But sometimes I come across things which upset my sleep, and when they are nowhere on our national political agenda, I feel OK about discussing them here.

Never in my life have I come across a report of more shaming disgrace than the Environmental Audit Committee’s January report on the state of Britain’s rivers. It is a uniquely horrible read. Let’s just have a taste of its opening observations:

“Getting a complete overview of the health of our rivers and the pollution affecting them is hampered by outdated, underfunded and inadequate monitoring regimes. It is clear, however, that rivers in England are in a mess. A ‘chemical cocktail’ of sewage, agricultural waste, and plastic is polluting the waters of many of the country’s rivers. Water companies appear to be dumping untreated or partially treated sewage in rivers on a regular basis, often breaching the terms of permits that on paper only allow them to do this in exceptional circumstances.”

The report ends with no fewer than 82 recommendations which, if implemented - and that is a big big IF - would reconstruct the entire water-industry infrastructure including the wholly inadequate, producer-captured so-called regulatory structure which has failed so disgracefully, disastrously, and in my view profanely.

Read it and weep. Read it and discover just what SDP leader William Clouston is going on about when he lambasts the indifference of our establishment.

What has happened to our rivers is profanity because rivers really are special. Rivers are the oldest geographical feature, literally older than the hills, older than some rocks even. Rivers run down from the Himalayas because they flowed before the Himalayas and can cut their way down faster than the Himalayas can rise. They are that old.

They are also geographically decisive. London is where it is because of the Thames, obviously. But ditto almost every major city and town in Britain, Europe, the world.

And, of course, they are a source of magic, of fun, of solace for walkers, fishermen, swimmers, painters, lovers, dogwalkers, children.

And, damningly, their condition is uniquely in our power to determine. For almost every other failure, politicians and administrations can offer up alibis. The failure to ‘tackle climate change’ can - rightly - be blamed on the rest of the world, and is probably impossible anyway. The failures of covid-policy can be answered with ‘well, it was a new disease, we didn’t understand it, and we didn’t want to take chances’. Failures in immigration/housing/schooling etc happened because ‘nobody guessed how many would arrive.’ The failure of economic policy can be explained by the fact that I’m not directing it (natch).

There’ll find an alibi, somewhere, even for the murderous failure of ‘smart motorways’.

But there is no alibi for the despoiling of our rivers. There are no ‘unexpected’ factors at work, no malign deus ex-machina to take the blame. The UK’s average rainfall is an almost stationary series over the last 20 yrs, with five of the last six years under-trend. The de-industrialization of the last 40 years has taken a whole range of industrial effluent out of the equation. We aren’t farming more. Yes, the population has grown, but the housing stock has certainly not kept pace. So pitch me your excuses.

What other excuses are there? There there are none: our nation’s rivers have been turned into open sewers because nobody gave a damn. Billions, billions taxed, on the globally pointless ‘net zero’, but revolting neglect of our river environment.

Let’s look at who was tasked with the job: let’s look at how Ofwat didn’t do its job. First, realize that Ofwat doesn’t have a seat at the Cabinet table - it’s a ‘non-ministerial government department.’ Nobody gives a damn. Read its Vision Statement. No don’t, unless you’ve got an strong stomach. Let me just record that it ends: “We created our vision of improving life through water, which is at the heart of all we do.” (Yes, we do need to discuss punishment - see below.)

Ofwat is funded by, surprise surprise, the water companies it regulates. Since 2012, and until the end of this week, its chairman is Jonson Cox, CBE. Mr Cox has, of course, a lot of relevant experience: he was MD of Yorkshire Water 1996-2000, and then during 2004-2010 he was CEO of Anglian Water. A poacher turned gamekeeper? If so, we only know that under his protection, the poachers made off with substantially all the game. This is him:

He’s out by the end of this week, and his successor will be Iain Coucher. His track record is perhaps less discouraging. Yes, he ran Network Rail from 2007 to 2010, but on the other hand, his current job is CEO of Britain’s Atomic Weapons Establishment, so he must have thought about pollution at some stage. My bet is that he is used to a seat at the table.

Given the situation he inherits, it is difficult to see how he could set new standard of failure.

The parliamentary report says: “Successive governments, water companies and regulators have grown complacent and seem resigned to maintaining pre-Victorian practices of dumping sewage in rivers.”

No, they have not ‘grown complacent’, nor are they ‘resigned’. Rather, with the regulator captured by the industry, we have private water companies who, quite literally, make their profits by shitting in our rivers.

Sewage overspills, or ‘shitting in our rivers’ is common: officially there were 403,174 incidents in 2020, up 27% yoy. These are meant to be emergency responses to unexpected storm conditions, but Sewer Overflow Permits aren’t justified by any particular rainfall threshold. Professor Peter Hammond, of Oxford University’s Big Data Institute: ‘When you hear water companies and the agency trying to justify spills. . . you hear people use the phrase ‘heavy rainfall and storms', but the permit does not specify a trigger amount of anything like that. Secondly, the further I have investigated. . . . I have found many [water companies] do not continue to treat at the minimum rate when they are spilling. Many such illegal spills are not identified by the Environment Agency.’

Moreover, the water companies are almost certainly lying to the Environment Agency. Peter Hammond got hold of the micro-data and set an AI to work on it. His conclusion? ‘There are at least 10 times more such breaches of permits than the agency has identified and prosecuted’.

Disgusting and disgraceful as the sewage situation is, the underlying situation is certainly even worse, because ‘A variety of other substances—metals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, and plastics—also contribute to poor water quality, yet many of these are simply not monitored routinely. Gathering data on the full range of pollutants requires sampling and laboratory analysis: given the resources currently made available for systematic monitoring both regionally and nationally, some consider that the levels of such pollutants are unlikely to be monitored. Levels of many legacy and emerging pollutants, including microplastics, narcotics and so called ‘forever chemicals’, are therefore simply not being routinely measured. Few inland sites are monitored for the kinds of bacterial pollution that can cause gastroenteritis.’

What can be done about this indifference, this insult, this profanity? What justice can be done?

First, it seems obvious to me that any water company that secures its profits by shitting in the rivers should not be in business. No free-marketeer can possibly justify a business model so dependent on ‘externalities’ like this. The fines should be high enough to force them to make the relevant investments or file for bankruptcy. Nationalise if necessary.

Second, though, I feel attracted to a form of Trial by Ordeal. The boards of the water companies despoiling our rivers should be forced to spend at least half an hour each day immersed in the rivers they oversee. If they catch something - gastro-enteritis if they’re lucky, Weil’s disease if they’re not - then they are properly and appropriately punished.