© Reuters. Surfers take part in a mass protest, organized by Ocean Charity Surfers, to demonstrate against water companies’ continued dumping of untreated sewage off the coast of Brighton, Britain, May 20, 2023. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez
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BRIGHTON, England (Reuters) – Thousands of Britons took to the sea and rivers on Saturday to demand an end to sewage pollution by water companies, highlighting a topic likely to be a problem in the upcoming general election.
Campaign groups Surfers Against Sewage and Ocean Activists have organized a national ‘paddling’ campaign in 12 locations across the UK, including Brighton in the south, Windermere in the Lake District, Plymouth in the south west and Edinburgh in Scotland.
About 200 skateboarders protested off the coast of the southern English resort of Brighton.
To the beat of a band beating drums and waving banners, the demonstrators called on British water companies to do more to prevent the discharge of sewage.
“We’re sick of sewage, and they need to take action,” Izzy Ross, director of the Surfers Against Drain campaign, told Reuters.
“We need to see an end to sewage discharges in bathing water by 2030, and we need to see a 90% reduction in sewage discharges across the country,” she said.
The protest was held as water companies face the biggest wave of public criticism over the dumping of raw sewage and the poor quality of rivers and beaches since the industry was privatized by the then Conservative government in 1989.
Public anger was stoked by dividend payments to investors and large salaries and bonuses to water industry executives.
Sewage is supposed to be released into waterways only during exceptional rains to prevent it from returning to homes.
However, in 2022, water companies in England alone released raw sewage into rivers and sea 301,091 times, an average of 825 times a day, according to data from the Environment Agency.
Activists say water companies are discharging far more than they should, including when there is no rain.
Decades of underinvestment in infrastructure have been blamed for this situation.
On Thursday, Water UK, the trade body representing the UK’s water industry, apologized, said the public was right to be upset, and said more should have been done to address the spills sooner.
It said the industry would invest 10 billion pounds ($12.6 billion) in “the largest sewer upgrade since Victorian times” to reduce waste flows.
But their pledge was rejected by campaigners, who said it would still have to be signed off by regulator Ofwat, while the investment would eventually be paid for by clients.
Activists also asserted that the amount was far less than the 56 billion pounds of investment the government said was needed to end the routine dumping of sewage into waterways.
($1 = 0.7923 pounds)
(Reporting by Jan Tessier; Writing by James Davey; Editing by Louise Heavens)