The Environment Agency today welcomed the Government’s final guidance on the scope of environmental improvements to be funded by the water industry price review, but said two important issues remain to be addressed by the financial regulator Ofwat.
Environment Agency Chief Executive Barbara Young said:
“Ofwat must now follow the guidance and enable companies to fund all the work that Ministers consider necessary to protect the environment, and must also fund a long term solution to sewage problems in the Thames.
The Environment Agency endorsed the Minister’s guidance and the Agency believes that the £ 3.2 billion pound investment programme it will bring benefits in excess of this cost for customers and the environment in which they live and work.
Barbara Young said: “The investment that Ministers are recommending offers excellent value for money. It will ensure protection of some of the countries’ most important river and wetland wildlife sites from pollution and damaging over-use of water. Measures to control water leakage and help manage water demand will also now be put in place as will efforts to tackle the nutrient phosphorus which is damaging the ecological balance of lakes and rivers. Projects to demonstrate whether endocrine disrupters in sewage can be removed effectively are now also to become a reality. The issue of climate change should also now be addressed effectively with the major implications for water supply and management that it affects.
“Water companies will also be asked to remedy pollution from hundreds of storm sewage overflows which empty raw sewage into streams and rivers during wet weather but, while we will see improvements to treatment at sewage works on the Thames, we will continue to press for Ofwat to allow funding to pursue a solution to the weekly round of sewage overflows into the Tideway. It is important that a long-term solution is found, as palliative measures will not resolve this problem.”
The Agency supports the Minister’s decision that, from 2005, the costs of dealing with water company abstractions that are damaging the environment will not be met from customers’ water bills, but that the Agency will use its statutory powers to modify abstraction licences to deliver necessary improvements within the 2005 to 2010 period. Barbara Young added:
“We believe that this will ensure that abstractors are treated more fairly. We still expect these schemes to be delivered within the 2005 to 2010 period.”
