Shocking map reveals Britain’s most polluted areas where RAW SEWAGE is pumped into sea and rivers
A SHOCKING map reveals Britain's most polluted areas where raw SEWAGE is pumped into our sea and rivers.
It comes after a row over pollution in Kent, where hundreds of tomatoes are growing on a beach from seeds found in human poo.
published the shocking interactive map which tracks real-time sewage overflows and pollution risk forecasts.
It monitors the water quality at over 400 locations around UK rivers and coastlines.
The marine conservation charity has spent years urging politicians to introduce a legal duty on water companies to stop discharging raw sewage into rivers and the ocean.
Surfers Against Sewage said: "The government has the chance to address the sewage pollution scandal."
But campaigners were left reeling after MPs voted to continue allowing sewage to be dumped into waterways while debating the Environment Bill this month.
In England alone 84 per cent of rivers and lakes have failed to meet the government’s target of good ecological status, reported .
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Campaigners have slammed the government's inaction, and said that accepting "400,000 sewage pollution events in a year doesn’t sound like very effective legislation to us".
Despite an amendment suggested in the House of Lords to beef up sewage discharge laws, the Government "rejected" a push to "stop water companies exploiting legal loopholes and treating rivers and the ocean as open sewers", Surfers Against Sewage added.
It said: "Putting this legal duty on water companies to take steps to reduce their reliance on sewage overflows could have made a real difference by forcing water companies to finally tackle their shocking sewage pollution record."
Allowing 400,000 sewage pollution events in a year doesn’t sound like very effective legislation to us.
Surfers Against Sewage
The group's leader Hugo Tagholm said: "Why wouldn’t they want water companies to have a legal obligation not to pollute our rivers and ocean with sewage.
"It beggars belief and hardly shows a commitment to be the greenest government ever."
However, the Government warned that it would cost up up to £600 billion to upgrade the system, and would mean digging up gardens across the nation to sort out the Victorian water system.
Peers are on Tuesday expected to support an amendment submitted by the Duke of Wellington, requiring water companies to reduce water pollution.
If approved by the Lords it will return to the Commons for a further vote, possibly on Thursday, said The Times.
Earlier this year Southern Water was fined a record £90 million for deliberately pumping 16 to 21 billion litres of sewage into the sea between 2010 and 2015.
