Water pollution, especially around our largest cities, is nothing new. Three hundred years ago Alexander Pope wrote of dead animals and waste clogging the Thames, ‘blotting the silver flood’. By the 19th century, the same river was famed for its ‘evil odour’, with years of sewage pollution finally leading to the Thames being considered biologically dead by the mid-20th century.
Whilst progress has been made in clearing up parts of the Thames, across the country our water environment is under unprecedented pressures - which threaten unprecedented consequences.
Pollution, including untreated human and animal waste, soil runoff, mountains of plastic and a cocktail of chemicals, is choking the life out of rivers – as is water loss, from over-abstraction, leakage and wastefulness. This twin assault from increasing pollution and increasing water loss puts our water environment at increasing risk.
Urgent action is needed to address the accelerating decline in our water environment from water abstraction reform, to water efficiency targets delivered through the Environment Bill, to the enforcement of a strong regulatory baseline to prevent pollution. This decline threatens not just the wildlife that relies on clean water, but is costing more money each year through poor crop yields, additional water treatment, a degraded natural environment and resulting ill health.
A report published in July by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) provides a stark warning on how these costs could increase yet further. The PAC report flags that over 3 billion litres of water in England, a fifth of the volume used, is lost to leakage every day, and notes the growing problem of over abstraction from rivers (particularly from rare and precious chalk streams). The report concludes with a clear warning that England faces ‘serious risk of running out of water within 20 years’. In the words of PAC Chair Meg Hillier MP ‘It is very hard to imagine, in this country, turning the tap and not having enough clean, drinkable water come out - but that is exactly what we now face’.
We know that we have a water crisis, and that it is getting worse. One of the lessons of the past few tragic months has been that we can’t afford to sit tight and hope that existential threats simply go away – we need to act on them, and to act quickly.
Fortunately, the rudiments of a water crisis action plan are coming together. The UK Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan (2018) stated that ‘clean and plentiful water’ will be achieved, and committed to improving at least three quarters of our waters to their natural state ‘as soon as is practicable’. Although we’d like to see more, this commitment (along with further commitments in the Environment Agency’s own 2025 plan) is a good start – but it needs to be followed up with meaningful measures to ensure it is fulfilled.
Several measures needed require investment; as such this autumn’s Comprehensive Spending Review provides an early opportunity for the Government to show it understands the urgency of the growing water problem that faces us. Actions such as boosting investment in water monitoring, and funding a major public campaign to tackle the wastage of water, will make a start towards plugging the growing cracks in our water infrastructure.
In the meantime, we face a summer where there is risk of drought in parts of England – and of chalk streams in the South East drying up, as they have in recent summers. As the PAC report makes crystal clear, such water shortages will worsen over the years ahead, first wreaking further havoc among aquatic wildlife, then damaging the wider natural environment before finally hitting our own taps. Without swift action, starting in the Comprehensive Spending Review, our water system could constitute a devastating demonstration of an old maxim - what starts as an environmental problem, ends as a human crisis.
Ali Morse is Water Policy Manager at The Wildlife Trusts and Chair of the Blueprint for Water Group. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Bright Blue.