Blaming water companies alone is a ‘get out of jail free’ card

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These money-grabbing utility giants does not represent the full picture (Getty)

Those getting hot under the collar about our failing sewage infrastructure and the dire levels of investment by the water companies have every right to be incensed by the filthy state of our beaches and rivers, let alone the cost of improving our system.

However, blaming these money-grubbing utility giants does not represent the full picture. Planners, local authority bodies, and the government are equally complicit in this debacle. They had in their hands the power to insist on an infrastructure capable of handling the waste from the thousands of new “Lego” homes plonked on farmland on the periphery of every city in the land.

Blaming water companies alone allows local authorities a “get out of jail free” card to which they are not entitled. Had local planners insisted upon a risk assessment and surveys of sewer capacity before allowing any developments to proceed would have saved miles of coastline and rivers from an evil cocktail of pollutants, nutrient overload, and E coli.