Last modified on Mon 14 Jun 2021 10.23 EDT
Water companies are being allowed to unlawfully discharge raw sewage into rivers at a scale at least 10 times greater than Environment Agency prosecutions indicate, according to analysis to be presented to the government.
The number of prosecutions of English water companies for unlawful spills from sewage treatment plants in 10 years are just a tiny fraction of the scale of potentially illegal discharges, the research presented to the environment minister, Rebecca Pow, this week will suggest.
Prof Peter Hammond, visiting scientist at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, will tell Pow that weak regulation, underreporting by water companies of potentially illegal discharges and a failure to hold companies to account mean there has been unchecked dumping of untreated sewage which would have resulted in ecological damage.