the government wants to reduce wastewater discharges into the sea to zero

Towards a sewer renovation plan in the United Kingdom? The British government wants to put an end to the discharge of untreated wastewater into the sea by 2050. A decision which will generate colossal investments which will result in an increase in consumer bills, the Minister warned on Saturday August 27. of the British Environment, George Eustice. Water supply companies will have to invest some 56 billion pounds (66 billion euros) to renovate sewage systems, according to a government plan presented on Friday.

It is “revolutionizing our sewer systems”, said George Eustice, interviewed by British radio BBC4. The Minister noted that the current situation, with some 15,000 sewage pipes flowing into the sea, was “a legacy of Victorian infrastructure” of the 19th century. Untreated sewage can thus be discharged in large quantities, particularly when the evacuation systems are saturated by violent stormy rains, as happened last week.

On Friday, the president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, alerted the French government to these wastewater discharges, calling them “ecological disaster” which has been getting worse since Brexit, he said.

George Eustice assured that the current British government, which has only a few days left of its existence awaiting the appointment by the Conservative Party of a successor to Boris Johnson by September 5, was “the first to seriously tackle this issue”. “The reason why this decision has been pushed back by successive governments, both Labor and Conservative, for decades, is because we wanted water bills to stay low, and that’s understandable.”pleaded the minister.

Water supply companies must have renovated pipes discharging near designated bathing areas under the government plan by 2035 and the others by 2050 at the latest. The additional cost to consumers by 2030 will be around £12 per year per household, and £42 by 2050.