Water UK

Naughty but nice - reducing urban diffuse water pollution is everyone’s responsibility

15/06/07

Politically incorrect perhaps, but the point is well made. It would certainly have been recognised by a wise delegate to a recent Water UK workshop on urban pollution. Having spent the morning listening to all manner of explanations and solutions from government, regulators, industry and green groups, he finally stood up and said:

"Most polluters aren’t environmental vandals. They are you, your workmates, your family and friends. How do we get to nice people?" (I paraphrase but not much.)

The case for a society-wide consensus on taking care of water in the environment grows stronger every day. In recent years The System (in the shape of water companies) has delivered big improvements using only our money; it largely spared us being involved or even paying attention. But raw water is so ubiquitously vulnerable and invisible that from now on we’ll all have to take an interest if we want to protect it from our cities and ourselves.

Chemical loads

How bad are things? In March The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution reported that although 95% of all rivers were of good quality, only 40% of urban rivers qualified on chemical standards and just 30% on biological standards. "Many urban rivers have been straightened to run through man-made channels or culverts and are surrounded by relatively impermeable surfaces, which means that surface water can enter the river in sudden bursts, causing peaks and troughs in river flow rates and rapid changes in temperature and chemical loads." (1)

The seriousness is also underlined in a consultation paper on "non-agricultural water diffuse pollution" (NADWP) from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs and the Welsh Assembly Government. (2) This is an early step in their implementation of the water framework directive – some would have liked it earlier, but never mind.

Clarity

The paper shows with admirable clarity how NADWP is a route into the environment for contaminants including detergents, solvents, hydro-carbons, metals and a range of organic and inorganic chemicals. For five priority areas – industry, transport, old mines, sewage and sediment – it covers the perpetrators, the nasties they release and how. It surveys existing legal and voluntary mechanisms and possible ways forward.

Encouragingly the authors are alive to the need to involve more people in the next phase of improvement. They highlight the part of awareness-raising "in particular to improve general understanding of drainage systems and wrong connections and blockage issues". The target would be "trades people and householders". We assume this embraces (no talk of "catching" if you please) the nice people who use fierce cleaning products to wash their cars on weekends.

Less shilly-shallying, please

Water UK is putting the case for:

 •  Less shilly-shallying with the polluter pays principle; it will never be easy but a more confident approach from policy-makers would help.
 •  The trade effluent control regime to be extended to other polluting sectors as allowed in Water Act 2003.
 •  A revised charging mechanism to take account of more complex effluent treatment.
 •  Powers to rectify misconnections and better building control to stop it happening at all.
 •  Progress on sustainable urban drains by overcoming legal and planning problems.
 •  More support for information programmes like Bag It and Bin It.

Above all we need to be more aware of the limitations of the sewerage system. It serves us well in what it was designed to do. But it can’t easily cope with the newer pressures of modern life like major loads of grease and macerated materials that cause blockages and overflows.

Is it feasible to think we could move on from "flush and forget" to a more informed and shared view of the basic service most people would rather not think about? The rewards for getting nice people on board will be great. Conversely the consequences of not facing up to NADWP will be serious – for water courses, biodiversity, urban regeneration and the lifestyles we all aspire to.

Barrie Clarke
bclarke@water.org.uk

1) The Urban Environment, RCEP, March 2007
2) Consultation on non-agricultural diffuse pollution in England and Wales, Defra and WAG, February 2007

A version of this article appears in Water & Waste Treatment magazine June 2007