A small snippet of where we’re at with England’s water problem.

‘Dirty Business’ is a British docudrama television series recently released about the absolutely horrendous damage that private water companies, and our non departmental public environmental body, the EA, have caused to our environments and peoples health.

Now, this has been on my radar for quite a few years, however, the series still absolutely shocked me at how disgusting everyone involved has dealt with our water situation especially water companies in the south of England.

Water companies discharged untreated waste into England’s rivers and seas 450,398 times in 2024. Some 14,500 sewage overflow pipes, which are meant only to operate in emergencies, discharged for a total of 3.6 million hours. Just 15% of rivers in England are deemed to be in good health, and people continue to fall ill or worse due to sewage while swimming in rivers or the sea.

When England’s water companies were privatised in 1989, they were handed to new owners debt-free and with a cash gift from the taxpayer. Rather than using this advantage to invest in infrastructure, many companies often owned by foreign or private equity interests loaded themselves with debt, which they used in large part to fund enormous dividend payouts totalling around £78 billion since privatisation. This was made easier by complex multi-layered corporate structures that obscured money flows, and by a regulatory regime that actually passed debt-servicing costs on to consumers through their bills.

As well as agricultural related pollution run off into waterways, data centres are rapidly appearing around the UK. UK parliament say that accelerated AI adoption alone could result in an additional 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water withdrawal by 2027, including onsite cooling and offsite electricity generation.

This is all while we continue to have longer drought periods and heavier rainy seasons with more flooding.

We need a REDO of our water systems, they don’t serve people or planet and have been exploited for too long. What about we consider district water management systems run by and owned by communities?✊