Archived press release

Foe welcomes water pollution charging announcement

3 July 1997

Friends of the Earth today welcomed the Government's interest in water pollution charging,as announced yesterday by Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The charge would hit the water and sewerage companies hardest, who are responsible for around four-fifths of discharges to water [1 ]. Around 90 per cent of industrial discharges from small and medium sized companies are to sewer [2], with industry paying the water and sewerage companies £163 million for doing so [3].

The charge could, in theory, apply to 100,000 discharges into water, but it more likely to apply to the 10,000 biggest and most polluting discharges that are regularly monitored by the Environment Agency. Water pollution charging is already used to improve river quality in France, Germany and the Netherlands [4].

Around ten per cent of rivers in the UK are still considered to be of poor or bad quality. Sea pollution has reached the point at which fish are so contaminated with dioxins and PCBs that taking cod liver oil (together with an average diet) will expose toddlers and school children to higher levels of these toxic chemicals than Government and World Health Organisation safety levels [5].

Friends of the Earth warns however that tough regulations will still be needed to eliminate the release of toxic, persistent and/or bio-accumulative substances and that economic instruments should only be seen as part of a package of measures to reduce pollution.

Mike Childs, Senior Pollution Campaigner at Friends of the Earth said:

" We welcome the Government's interest in water pollution charging. Together with tough regulation and a strong Environment Agency, it could help clean-up our rivers and seas to a state where they can again provide us with a healthy harvest of fish and fish oil products."

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1] Number of discharges to water by type (1993)

REGION SEWAGE TRADE OTHER TOTAL
Northumbria & Yorkshire 11140 1762 114 13016
Anglian 14962 937 1257 17156
Thames 10434 1026 612 12072
Southern 8446 770 2958 12174
North West 8395 680 110 9185
South West 10678 2850 650 14178
Welsh 7183 2230 223 9636
Severn Trent 14139 2640 2821 19600
TOTAL 85377 12895 8745 107017
(per cent) (79 %) (12 %) (9 %)

Source: Environment Agency web pages.
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/s-enviro.html#contents

[2] Dr Thairs, CBI, in oral evidence to House of Lords European Communities Committee. on 27th November 1990. House of Lords, Select Committee on the European Communities, Municipal Waste Water Treatment, Session 1990-91, 10th Report, volume 2, HMSO.

[3] Water Facts '96, Water Services Association

[4] Environment Taxes, implementation and environmental effectiveness, European Environment Agency, 1996.

[5] Contaminated cod liver oil takes school children and toddlers over toxic safety threshold,FOE press release, 15th June 97.

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