16 September 2023 , 16:07
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Bosses of water firms accused of illegally dumping sewage in rivers and seas on dry days pocketed £3.4 million in salary last year.
Sarah Bentley, the outgoing CEO of Thames Water, was the top earner taking home £2m in salary and bonuses in 2021-22. Wessex boss Colin Skellett trousered £982,000 over the same period, while Southern Water Chief Executive Laurence Gosden was paid £427,000 according to the firm’s annual accounts.
It comes after Environment Secretary Therese Coffey faced calls to quit if her department is found to have broken the law over sewage discharges. Water companies are allowed to spill untreated wastewater under certain circumstances - such as heavy rainfall - to prevent the drain system becoming overloaded.
But it’s illegal to dump untreated wastewater into rivers and seas when there is no rain to dilute it. And the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) this week found “possible failures to comply with environmental law" by the Government over combined sewer overflows (CSOs).
CSOs are only supposed to be used after periods of unusually heavy rain to prevent the system backing up and flooding people's homes and businesses with sewage. But the OEP has said the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Environment Agency (EA) and Ofwat may have “misinterpreted” the law and allowed water companies to pollute England's waterways outside of these circumstances. It is now investigating further.
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A BBC investigation last week claimed the three firms - Thames, Wessex and Southern Water had spilled on dry days for a combined 3,500 hours in 2022. They included spills on 19 July, 2022 - the hottest day on record. The investigation focused on those three firms because others refused to supply data because they are under criminal investigation by the Environment Agency. Labour has called for automatic fines to punish law-breaking companies - blaming the growing sewage scandal on the Tory government.
“There can be no more damning metaphor for 13 years of Conservative failure than stinking, toxic sewage lapping up on our rivers, lakes, and seas,” Steve Reed, the newly appointed Shadow Environment Secretary, said. “ Rishi Sunak wouldn’t let raw sewage in his private swimming pool, but he’s let human excrement pollute our countryside.
“This scandal is their fault - it appears that the government could have broken the law in failing to act. They cut back enforcement and monitoring against water companies releasing this filth, and are now failing to prosecute them when they are blatantly breaking the law.”
Matthew Topham, lead campaigner at public ownership campaign group We Own It said: “Time and again we’ve heard water companies blame sewage dumping on the weather, but it’s increasingly clear that, come rain or shine, our rivers are being polluted. The public are rightly outraged that, since privatisation, shareholders and bosses have made a killing while neglecting our crumbling infrastructure.
“If our water were publicly owned, that money could have been invested in lowering bills and preventing storm overflows getting into such a dire state.” Wessex Water paid £200,000 in bonuses to 4 bosses tasked with protecting the environment in 2021-22, despite the Environment Agency downgrading its rating from 4 stars in 2020 to 2 stars. Thames Water, which supplies a quarter of people in Britain, was fined £3.3 million in July after pleading guilty to four charges of illegally discharging waste.
And in 2021, Southern Water was handed a record £90 million fine after pleading guilty to thousands of illegal discharges of sewage which polluted rivers and coastal waters in Kent, Hampshire and Sussex. Mr Topham added: “The tide is turning on water companies. A privileged few are profiting while the rest of us are penny-pinching, and it’s time to end the rip-off. Instead of allowing millions of pounds to leak out in bumper bonuses and CEO salaries, we should bring our water system into public hands, where it can work for people and planet, not private profit.”
Wessex water disputed the allegations in the BBC report, saying some of the spills were due to groundwater coming up into pipes and forcing it to spill. They said in a statement: “The discharges referenced are caused by high groundwater which, unlike rainfall that stops relatively quickly, continues for days or even months. None of these overflows cause rivers to fail to meet ecological standards.”
Southern Water said ‘dry spills’ were “a complex issue” - and also said the spills could be caused by groundwater entering the system. Thames water said: “The Environment Agency's methodology for calculating dry day spills is still being determined and we will continue to work with our regulators as they define this. We regard all discharges of untreated sewage as unacceptable, and we have planned investment in our sewage treatment works."