More than fifty beaches in Glaterra and Wales are so contaminated by sewage that the health of bathers is at risk and in recent days some have even had to be closed to the public. The reason is not only in the overflow caused by the heavy rains of recent days in different regions, which happens that the contamination will reach the rivers and the sea, but also because the companies in charge of its treatment are discharging large amounts without treating it, which has drawn criticism from politicians on both sides of the English Channel. Organizations have also shouted to the heavens at a problem that threatens to become chronic if immediate action is not taken and that this weekend, the last of August and with the Monday holiday, could put many families at risk.
According to the organization Surfers Against Sewage (SAS), this summer alone they have found some 2300 untreated or partially treated sewage discharges across the UK, a problem for humans and others. to be alive. “It is not only the tomiel discomforts and sore throats that concern us, but much more serious threats”, explained Hugo Tagholm, executive president of SAS, who detailed that “our study with the European Center for Environment and Health Humans showed that regular surfers and swimmers have very high levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in addition to normal systems. That is a huge threat to modern medicine.” Dr Imogen Napper, a marine biologist at the University of Plymouth, actually calls sewage discharges “ambient vandalism”.
"The Canal and the North Sea are not dumps," says French politician Stéphanie Yon-Courtin, who was part of the European Parliament's fisheries committee and who is just one of the voices that have been launched against a practice that, in The word of the president of this committee, Pierre Karleskind, is proof that the United Kingdom is neglecting "the commitments made with Brexit" and putting "20 years of European progress in water quality standards at risk". But from the Ministry of the Environment he assured the BBC that it is not true that the country is not meeting the collective objectives on water quality. "Our water quality laws are even stricter than when we were in the EU," a spokesman said, adding that Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government has legislated "for companies to reduce the frequency and volume of discharges." “caused by “overflows” after events such as storms, and there are also laws that require “the installation of monitors to report any discharge in real time.”
In this regard, activists and parties such as the Liberal Democrats assure that these devices have not been installed and there are even many that do not work, which only worsens a problem that Water UK, which represents the water industry in the territory British, if it is recognized that it exists, but it is assumed that in the resolution phase there is that, they asserted in a communication, the company "agrees that there is an urgent need" to put solutions, motivation for which they are investing more than 3.000 million pounds that are part of a five-year national environmental program that started in 2020 and runs until 2025.
But from the premier's own office he condemned the industry for not reducing the discharge of wastewater and "putting shareholders before customers" and a spokesman for the Executive saw that if the companies do not "take urgent measures on this issue" they face to be sanctioned with "fines", which have become millions in the past. For example, in 2021 alone, the Southern Water company was fined £90 million for "deliberately" dumping billions of liters of raw sewage into the sea in what company sources called negligence. .
Activists such as the mediatic Feargal Sharkey argue that the industry is in a "state of extraordinary chaos" that it has reached after decades of underinvestment, speculation, poor infrastructure, serious regulatory failures and a significant lack of adequate political oversight, To those who add climate change and heavy rains that overflow the sewers.
