Water UK, a trade association of the UK’s water suppliers, has called for new rules to clean up rivers and make them safe for open-water or ‘wild’ swimming.
The call follows a report last month from the Rivers Trust said that only 14 percent of England’s water bodies are in ‘good ecological health’ and that none of them meets chemical standards, in part because in heavy storms, the water companies release raw sewage into them to prevent household flooding.
That kind of overflow is legal, but meant to be used only in ‘exceptional’ circumstances which are not clearly defined, and there were 400,000 discharges during 2020.
A new law moving through Parliament and already passed in the House of Lords would change that by requiring water companies to “take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows and requires that they progressively reduce the harm caused by these discharges.”
