King's College London

The recent announcement of £168 million in sewage pollution fines issued to three water companies has renewed hope that the regulator for England and Wales, Ofwat, is finally taking action in line with public opinion.

In reality, though, this looks more like a tokenistic gesture in a frustrating sisyphean scenario – one we have experienced before in the form of past multi-million pound fines, and one I suspect we will continue to relive, and regret, over and over unless new approaches and collaborative efforts are made.

The reality of corporate fines is they rarely directly affect the offending companies. Rather, they are absorbed in corporate processes as line items on yearly financial reports. When these reports are unbalanced, adjustments are made in the form of increases in the cost of services – in this scenario, our water bills (increases that Ofwat recently approved).

Meanwhile, the fines some of us are rejoicing about are mere drops in the bucket for companies like Thames Water, whose £104 million penalty represents around 5% of the £2.2 billion revenue it reported last year.

These fines are simply pacifiers in response to public outcry, where the movement to address sewage contamination has been popularised by celebrities such as Feargal Sharkey and activists like Surfers Against Sewage.

In many ways, Thames Water is biding its time until the fruits of public investment in the London Tideway Tunnel become a reality. The Tideway Tunnel is Thames Water’s response to the 2012 European Union ruling that the UK was in breach of directives to protect the environment from sewage pollution. And yes, Thames Water’s consumers paid for these £5 billion infrastructure improvements.

Originally designed by Sir Joseph William Bazalgette, the capital’s sewerage system dates back to 1866, meaning not only is the crumbling infrastructure in dire need of renovations, it was never intended to service the huge population that lives in London today.

With its increased capacity and streamlined structure, the Tideway Tunnel has been framed as a universal solution for London, promising a 95% reduction in sewage pollution events. Yet it is essentially a bigger and more expensive version of an antiquated system that is fundamentally flawed, unless everyone involved follows the same rules to ensure its longevity.

This is the scenario we are entering as we look to the Tideway Tunnel as a solution for London. If the population does not change the way it values our investment in waste systems, we are going to run into the same problems as over the past two centuries – only this time on a bigger scale.

A new sewage system will not stop the cotton bud sticks, wet wipes, condoms, fat and other non-flushable items from entering and blocking pipes, causing blockages and further increasing pollution events and rising water costs.

Of course, there are good reasons for the reputation of greed and mismanagement that private water companies have earned; they are capitalist entities who seek to increase their yearly revenues.

Despite providing a service everyone requires, having a monopoly within their regions, and selling a product that literally falls from the sky for free, these water companies have somehow managed to fail at being successful businesses. But some of this has to do with the interplay between service providers and service receivers, and both sides are responsible for their fair share of the pollution we are currently drowning in.

What can be done to improve the situation?

So, what needs to be done to move forward from this desperate situation? Ofwat’s implementation of an independent monitor to oversee Thames Water’s financial turnaround plan is a step in the right direction. However, to otherwise continue on the same route of tokenistic fines that are easily brushed off through accounting systems and cost diversion to the customer, seems to fall into the category of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

This raises the question of how to ensure accountability among offenders. It turns out that according to the sentencing guidelines for environmental offences defined in 2014, deliberate and repeated breaches of the 1990 Environmental Protection Act are a criminal offence, punishable by the suspension of the business and even imprisonment. Perhaps a few weeks behind bars for some water company bosses would finally get the message across.

But alongside this radical suggestion, it is also time for the public to take responsibility for its part in the maintenance and preservation of our sewage systems. It is easy to point the finger at “big water” and demand that sewage overflows stop, but the misuse of these systems is equally as responsible for the associated blockages and failures.

As individuals, we have become further and further removed from the processes that keep our immediate surroundings clean. Somehow, we are under the impression that what we flush and pour down the drains magically goes away. It’s time to take better care of the systems we all pay to build and maintain; to reconnect with our waste, and take ownership for our part in breaking the system.