Let them eat… porridge
Following the release of the Environment Agency’s latest annual Environmental Performance Assessment
on our local water company, Kent Barker writes an open letter to the bosses and board at Southern Water
Well, whoopy-do. Well done Southern Water. Top of the list again. A total of 372 pollution incidents last year. The highest rate among all nine water companies. Ninety-four pollution events per 10,000 square kilometres. You left the other companies standing. Wessex had just twenty-one. Only South West Water got anywhere near achieving your astounding record.
Do you perhaps need reminding what a ‘pollution incident’ is? According to the Environment Agency at its worst it has a “serious, extensive or persistent impact on the environment, people or property.” To the rest of us that means raw sewage regularly released into our rivers or onto our shores. The effects include ‘harm to human health’. Thanks, Southern. Keep up the good work.
Well, actually of course, you HAVE been keeping up the good work. A year ago this month you were fined a record £90 million pounds after pleading guilty to 51 counts involving “thousands of illegal discharges of sewage, pollution rivers and coastal waters of Sussex, Kent and Hampshire”. So not much sign of improvement in the intervening 12 months then?
CREDIT: Susan McFie
Even the chair of the Environment Agency is getting a bit fed up with your behaviour. “It’s appalling that water companies’ performance on pollution has hit a new low,” said Emma Howard Boyd as she released the latest report which said that water and sewage companies needed to ‘get a grip’ on their performance.
But what are the chances of the government taking any notice of her recommendation that there should be: “prison sentences for chief executives and board members whose companies are responsible for the most serious incidents and company directors struck off so they cannot move on in their careers after illegal environmental damage”? A bit
of a rhetorical question given, more generally, the number of directorships held by government ministers and backbenchers. You wouldn’t want to set a precedent would you? And what about Hastings Borough Council’s call
for Southern Water to ‘return to public ownership’. Hmm. Tory government. Re-nationalisation? Not too likely. But it’s OK. A full council meeting voted to ‘seek more regular public meetings with Southern water”. Yep, you’ll doubtless be shaking in your shoes over that call to arms.
But perhaps you could tell me, and the good readers of HIP, just how you managed to be so utterly incompetent and continue to feed us such an extensive diet of raw sewage? How did you achieve the largest number of “failing sites” (97.9) in the country? How do you manage to be “significantly below target” for total pollution incidents/serious pollution incidents and supply/demand balance index? (The index measures security of supply – or lack of – against what you promised). You were in the red for all those categories. Giving you an overall performance rating of just one star. Though I’ll bet some board members were patting themselves on the back at achieving even that. “Not so bad old boy. They don’t award stars to just anyone, you know”. Well actually they do. You can’t get lower than one star out of four.
So if we want to speak to you this time next year, will you be in jail? Will you be struck off as company directors? Will you personally be liable to fines greater than your annual salary? I’ll take a small wager that there are plenty of people in and around Hastings who think you absolutely should be. And another – slightly larger – bet that you won’t be.
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