A recent report from the BBC has revealed that United Utilities dumped millions of litres of untreated sewage into Windermere, one of England’s most famous lakes. The incident occurred in February as a result of a telecoms fault that interrupted the operation of the pumping station in Bowness-on-Windermere. While United Utilities claims it responded to the issue quickly, documents obtained by the BBC indicate that the illegal pollution was allowed to continue for 10 hours, and the environment agency was not notified until 13 hours later.
This is not the first time United Utilities has been involved in such an incident; a similar occurrence happened at the same location in November 2022. Witnesses alleged that United Utilities failed to respond appropriately during the February pollution incident, indicating that the company would have been notified about the fault immediately after it occurred. According to the insiders, had United Utilities sent an out-of-hours team to the site promptly, most of the discharge could have been prevented.
Following the incident, United Utilities took water samples near the site, which reportedly showed that the release of sewage had a limited impact on the lake. The samples were collected about 4 hours after the emissions stopped and were taken from the lake shore. The company alleges that it did not measure the quantity of pollution pumped into the lake, despite insider information that emergency pumps operated for about six hours, dumping over 10 million litres of raw sewage into the lake.
It’s not surprising that the release of sewage into Windermere has raised concerns, as algal blooms caused by phosphorus build-up have been observed in the lake in recent summers. Save Windermere, a group campaigning against sewage pollution, labeled the phenomenon as the “single biggest threat to England’s largest lake.” The Environment Agency’s permit stipulates that equipment failures and pollution incidents must be reported immediately, and failure to do so is a criminal offense. Although the agency received a call about the priming 13 hours after it started, an insider told the BBC that it is challenging to investigate such situations when they occur
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More