#EndSewagePollution - How You Can Help

October 27, 2021

#EndSewagePollution - How You Can Help

The Tory government took the UK by storm this week with their decision to reject plans to protect our rivers and oceans from having raw sewage dumped into them.

MPs were advised to reject the proposal, which would have prevented water companies from exploiting legal loopholes and treating the rivers and oceans as open sewers.

The decision was met with disdain from a large number of people - hopefully a number large enough to invoke some change.

You see, it is sadly far too easy to cast political moves like this out of mind. We cannot physically see the changes, and therefore we live as though they are not there.

The decision is being reviewed again on Wednesday in a second vote, and this time it is critical to get this right. And you can help!

Surfers Against Sewage have created a tool which autogenerates an email to your local MP. The tool can be found here. We highly encourage our readers to use this - it takes only half a minute - as we cannot condone the knowing pollution of the rivers and seas without at the bare minimum of reasonable preventative strategies in place.

The email reads,

"Dear [Local MP],

Did you know there are 6 storm overflows in your constituency which discharged raw sewage into rivers for at least 774 hours in 2020? (for more info visit https://arcg.is/0qLTfv)

But we have an opportunity to #EndSewagePollution by amending the Environment Bill to place a legal duty on water companies to take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows. This legal duty was a key part of Phillip Dunne MP's hugely popular Sewage (Inland Waters) Bill.

The Lords, with their backing of over 91, 000 members of the public and cross party support, passed amendment 60 to clause 80 to put this legal duty into the Environment Bill. But we need your support to ensure this duty makes it into the Act.

While recent government amendments to the Bill are welcome, they alone do not deliver the urgent action needed to end sewage pollution. That's why I'm calling on you, as my MP, to support amendments to clause 82 when the Bill returns to the Commons and ensure the legal duty not to pollute makes it into the act.

Kind regards,

[Your name]."

Hall of Shame - the Tories who voted in favour of sewage pollution.

Robert Courts, MP for Witney and West Oxfordshire - Conservative