THE UK has a very mucky problem. News feeds overflow with videos of raw sewage gushing into rivers during heavy rain. In our report (see Sewage crisis: The truth about British rivers and how to clean them up), we explore why the country still dumps untreated waste into waterways and how to fix this. The solution, it turns out, includes thinking about the water system as a whole: tackling sewage pollution is also about fixing flooding and drought problems. Tougher governance is essential, too.
The UK isn鈥檛 alone. In Australia, Sydney Water recently agreed to pay $347,100 for environmental and community works after a broken pipe caused more than 3 million litres of untreated sewage to overflow into several watercourses. As in the UK, the solutions involve joined-up thinking: Australia is short of water, and would do well to recycle treated sewage water rather than dumping it in the sea.
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The US has similar issues. In recent months, coastal swimming areas in Long Beach, California, had to close temporarily due to sewage spills. Meanwhile, like much of the UK, a lot of New York City has a combined sewage system that carries domestic waste and runoff, so heavy rain sees sewage systems unable to cope and waste overflows into the Hudson river.
In the UK, much of the blame has been levelled at privatised water companies, which are responsible for sanitation in many regions. It is true that they have run up enormous debts while giving away billions to shareholders. They have also failed on many metrics, including poorly-maintained pipes. However, the real culprit is the government, which has failed to give water companies stringent enough targets or enforce those that have been set.
If firms profited while the environment suffered, it is because the government let them. Water and sanitation are public goods on which we all depend, so if private firms fail, governments ultimately have to step in. It is a pattern we have seen over and over, from banking crashes to nuclear power accidents. We can鈥檛 deny the fact that some problems need strong political intervention 鈥� and stopping sewage overflows is one of them.
