The Chichester Harbour Trust welcomes the investigation announced by Ofwat into the way water companies are operating in England and Wales.
Ofwat's CEO David Black announced yesterday (18 Nov) that an investigation is being launched to establish whether water and wastewater companies in England and Wales are complying with the obligations Ofwat is responsible for enforcing. New checks by the Environment Agency (EA) led to water and wastewater companies admitting that they may be releasing wastewater into the environment when they were not permitted to do so.
In June, Ofwat wrote to water and wastewater companies setting out the need to improve performance on the use of storm overflows. Ofwat is concerned that companies have not acted on this.
The recently approved Environment Act places new responsibilities on the water treatment companies to progressively reduce the adverse impacts of discharges from storm overflows. This underlines the importance of companies fully complying with existing environmental obligations in regard to wastewater treatment and storm overflow discharges.
The Chichester Harbour Trust hopes that this work will go some way to reducing storm discharges into the Harbour which are having such a serious effect on both the ecology and community of this unique area.
Photo credit: Rick Gatley
