News
Water Firms ‘Manipulating’ Self-Reporting Regime To Avoid Pollution Detection
In 2011, the Environment Agency introduced the environmental performance assessment (EPA) to compare performance between the nine different water and sewerage companies in England and Wales, with the various metrics reviewed every five years to drive improvements and meet water sustainability expectations.
The fourth EPA metric is the self-reporting of pollution incidents, which assesses the percentage of pollution incidents that are self-reported by water suppliers to the Environment Agency, with cases brought to the organisation’s attention by the firm in question before a member of the public or another third party.
The aim of this self-reporting scheme is to ensure that water suppliers are able to react quickly to reduce the impact of pollution incidents and learn the requisite lessons to prevent similar cases happening in the future.
For the five-year period between 2021 and 2025, water companies need to achieve high levels of self-reporting, with at least 80 per cent of incidents self-reported by 2025 and the aim being for all suppliers to achieve green EPA status for this particular metric.
Manipulation
However, according to an Observer report, thousands of fraudulent pollution tests have been passed under the self-monitoring scheme, with operational data from water firms showing that effluent outflows had stopped on days that samples were supposed to have been taken.
Environment Agency rules allow these no-flow events to be recorded as compliant with the conditions of the companies’ operating schemes, despite the fact that testers were unable to verify whether too much pollution was being allowed to flow into rivers.
Under the self-reporting regime, between 12 and 24 water samples are taken from sewage works outflows every year to see if the treated effluent is compliant with environmental permits. If no effluent is flowing at the time of sampling, the treatment works is reported as being compliant, as long as the member of staff is satisfied that there is evidence of no flow.
Peter Hammond from campaign group Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (Wasp) carried out independent analysis of no-flow events taking place between 2021 and 2023 where plants were considered to be compliant with permits.
The organisation has since compiled 18 examples at 14 plants involving seven water suppliers where no-flows were reported on days that a sampler arrived to carry out tests. In some instances, previous tests had already shown that these treatment works were at risk of breaching or had already breached their environmental permits.
The firms in question say that there were legitimate reasons for these no-flow events, including power cuts, planned maintenance, blockages, intermittent flow and tankerage of sewage to other plants. They stressed that there are strict measures in place to prevent manipulation or abuse of the self-monitoring system.
However, this is not the first time that water suppliers have been questioned over these no-flow events.
Southern Water, for example, was previously fined for deliberate manipulation of effluent flows to avoid detection of pollution incidents. In October 2019, the company was fined £126 million for breaches of licence conditions, including artificial no-flows at sewage plants.
Interestingly, once the company was under investigation, the number of reported no-flow events dropped from 124 in 2017 to 12 in 2018.
Mr Hammond told the news source: “Water companies cannot be allowed to mark their own homework. Monthly manual testing of treated sewage must be replaced by continuous automated sampling. Default assumption of permit compliance in the face of failed sampling is totally unacceptable.”
Now, the Environment Agency has said that changes to the rules will be implemented at the start of next year, with water suppliers required to reschedule samples in the event of no flow of effluent. They will also be required to document when and why these events occur, making the information available for subsequent audit by the organisation.
Ofwat has also confirmed that it would carry out a review of Mr Hammond’s report, saying that there is ongoing enforcement activity taking place against all 11 water companies, with the watchdog considering whether environmental protection obligations are being fulfilled and whether pollution is being minimised, taking all relevant evidence into account.