Billions have been funnelled out of the country while pipes leak, and faeces pollutes our water
Around 16,000 households and businesses in the Brixham area of Devon have been told not to use their tap water for drinking without boiling and cooling it first.
We take it for granted that we can drink water straight from the tap. Do that in most other countries, and you run the risk of getting ill. It takes a lot of resources to ensure the domestic water supplies will not make you sick, and the residents of Brixham in Devon are currently suffering the consequences of what happens when this water system breaks down.
An outbreak of cryptosporidiosis had been linked to tap water contamination. More than 100 people in the area have reported symptoms to their GP in the last week. Caused by the parasite cryptosporidium, these symptoms can include extremely unpleasant and protracted episodes of diarrhoea and vomiting.
South West Water have issued notices that tap water should be boiled before drinking or cleaning teeth, and opened two water bottle collection points. A primary school has been forced to close because it cannot guarantee safe water to its pupils. Given that the onset of symptoms can take around 10 days, this disruption is set to continue with potentially many more people becoming sick.
The source of the water contamination appears to be a faulty air valve in a set of pipes running underneath farmland. This has allowed manure or slurry into the freshwater system. Cryptosporidium can be present in animal faeces, so you may come back home with more than some photos of cute calves after a trip to a local farm if you do not wash your hands.
This latest issue with UK water follows on from what are now continual incidents of human and animal waste contaminating rivers and coastal waters. While people in Brixham have been either boiling water or waiting in long queues for bottled water, swimmers have been avoiding Devon’s River Dart due to dangerous water. The Dart, like many rivers around the UK, has been plagued with poor quality water as a result of pollution from farm runoff and sewage treatment plant discharges.
In response to the chronic problem of water quality in the Dart river, the Government recently designed four wild swimming spots along its banks as “bathing water sites“. This does not mean it will be safe to swim there, rather that the local authorities will have an obligation to regularly test the water and notify the public accordingly.
So instead of having a suspicion that a lunch time dip could lead to a week of gastric distress, you will be able to consult a website that will tell you that levels of E. coli and intestinal enterococci are dangerously high, and so you should stay on dry land.
There are ongoing and fierce debates as to why UK water is in such a dreadful state. The Government adopts a you’ve-never-had-it-so-good-approach by arguing water quality has improved over the past 20 years, while acknowledging there is still work to do.
That work includes stopping the 3.6million hours of sewage spills into UK waterways in 2023, leading to some 75 per cent of all rivers being deemed as posing a serious risk to human health.
We can reconcile these conflicting positions by understanding just who has had it never so good. It’s not the general public, but the water companies and their financial backers. Between 2010 and 2022 the average total dividends paid out to UK water company shareholders was £1.83bn a year.
The billions that could have been spent on cleaning up our water instead makes its way into the accounts of people and organisations with no intrinsic interests in UK water quality. Over 70 per cent of UK water companies’ shareholders are outside of the UK. Wessex Water is 100 per cent owned by Malaysian company, YTL. The previous owner was Enron. Yes, that Enron.
One of the main arguments for the privatisation of water companies in the 1980s was that this would increase the flow of investment into this critical utility and so ensure the highest possible water quality.
Instead billions have been funnelled out of the country while pipes leak, and faeces pollutes our rivers and seas. Boiling water to make it safe can only be a temporary measure.
People need to be put before and above profits. Fixing the systemic issues with the UK water system now requires the sterilisation of free market ideology.