Water companies have missed their targets to reduce pollution through 2,487 accidents recorded in 2024 – twice the limit they set Environment Agency.
The data revealed under the Freedom of Information Law show that companies have been assigned collectively Environment Agency The goal of a 40 % decrease in pollution accidents, but instead recorded a 30 % increase.
The number of pollution accidents in 2024 was the highest in a decade.
A new report issued by the charitable browsers against wastewater using discharge data, disease data and numbers from its application, which uses citizen science to track wastewater spills, reveals that the water industry is in England It failed to reach its goals to reduce pollution accidents during the last investment period from 2020-2025.
Under the new investment period, starting this year, Customers have to face average rise in £ 123 bills Therefore, water companies can invest in pipelines and sewage repair to stop pollution flow. The Charitable Society said that “urgent and radical reform” for the sector is required, as the previous promises were broken in the last round of funding.
The report also reveals that despite the failures in reducing pollution and new regulations aimed at reducing profits for executives who head wastewater spills, shareholders were paid 1.2 billion pounds in 2023-24 despite the restrictions of the number of watches of raw sewage to England.
“The numbers are amazing: standard hours of wastewater drainage, huge increases in bills, and thousands of people who have the disease, however, the bitter industry still has billions of bills motivation money to the shareholders. Things cannot be more clear: this broken system needs urgent reform,” said Giles Presto, CEO of Sanitation.
“We can change things if we change the way our system is running. Around the world, the standard of water management is at the local level, instead of the 100 % private property model in force in England that has proven to be catastrophic of the environment and public health.“
The charitable organization runs the disease monitoring plan so that people can report a suspected disease to communicate with polluted water. Poor are at risk of bacteria, including E Coli If the water in which they are swimming was recently underwent sewage leakage.
In 2024 alone, sanitation surfers received 1,853 disease reports by applying it – at a rate of five people getting sick a day after using water. Among these, 331 had to see a doctor, and 79 % of them reported that their doctor attributed their illness to the pollution of wastewater. There were hundreds of cases of gastritis, intestine and chest infections, as well as serious bacterial infections and hospital acceptance.
In September 2023, 28 -year -old Charlie Clarke in Lake Clevidon Marine was near Bristol while training in the Ironman race. The next day, it collapsed during the run and was taken to the hospital for ECGS tests and blood tests. Over the next four months, multiple tests have concluded that the virus caught during swimming has reduced its blood pressure and caused a simple heart problem.
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Clark said: “This experience and diagnosis brought me back to a number of methods. My daily life was affected, as I could not raise the heart rate during healing. Daily tasks have become an obstacle to normal life – for example, bike movement is no longer an option.
“My main social outlet is sport, which has been suspended for several months. This affected my confidence more and me is especially isolated from football teams and cycling. It took me about a year to become confident enough to raise the heart rate to the maximum.”
A spokesman for Body Body Body said in the industry: “There is no water leakage at all. And with our sea. “
The Environmental Agency for comment was also contacted.
