Put an end to “a legacy of Victorian infrastructure” from the 19th century. The British government wants to reduce to zero discharges of untreated wastewater into the sea by 2050, colossal investments which will result in an increase in consumer bills, the Minister of the Environment said on Saturday.
Water supply companies will have to invest some 56 billion pounds (66 billion euros) to renovate sewage systems, according to a government plan presented on Friday. It is a question of “revolutionizing our sewer networks”, underlined George Eustice, interviewed by BBC4 radio, noting the some 15,000 sewage pipes flowing into the sea.
Many beaches in the UK closed to swimming
Untreated sewage can thus be discharged in large quantities, particularly when the evacuation systems are saturated by violent stormy rains, as happened last week. At the height of the summer season, many beaches in the United Kingdom were thus prohibited for swimming due to the health risk.
On Friday, the president of the Hauts-de-France region (northern France) Xavier Bertrand had alerted the French government to these waste water discharges, an “ecological disaster” which, according to him, has worsened since Brexit. As for George Eustice, he assured that the current British government, which has only a few days left of its existence awaiting the appointment by the Conservative Party of a successor to Boris Johnson by the 5 September, was “the first to seriously tackle this file”.
Some 12 pounds per year and per household
“The reason why this decision has been pushed back by successive governments, both Labor and Conservative, for decades, is that we wanted to keep water bills low, and we can understand that,” pleaded George Eustice.
Water supply companies must have renovated pipes discharging near designated bathing areas under the government plan by 2035 and the others by 2050 at the latest. The additional cost to consumers by 2030 will be around £12 per year per household, and £42 by 2050.
The Liberal Democrat opposition called this plan a “cruel joke” and estimated that there would still be 325,000 sewage spills per year in 2030, into the sea, lakes or rivers. The European Commission said on Thursday that it would soon respond to complaints from MEPs on the subject.