ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
Meteor Communications wins bathing water messaging contract
The Environment Agency has awarded Meteor Communications a 3-year contract to issue bathing water alerts via text and email during theMay to September bathing season.
Under the BathingWater Regulations 2013, the Environment Agencymonitors and reports bathing water quality around English coasts and at designated inland bathing waters. This data is utilised by the Agency’s BathingWater Pollution Risk
Forecasting systemwhichmodels factors such as weather and tides to predict bathing water quality. This pollution risk information is disseminated to the public via the Swimfo website, andMeteor Communications will be responsible for sending daily and intra-day Pollution Risk Forecast notificationmessages to Environment Agency BathingWater Area Leads and those Local Authorities that are responsible formanaging beach access
and signage to informbathers on water quality status. The notifications will also be sent to digital public information signs that are located at some beach locations.
Meteor Director Andrew Scott says: “Water quality and communications are two of our key specialisms, so we are delighted to have been awarded this contract, and bathing water quality is a highly topical issue, so it is gratifying to be able to help.”
The affluent and the effluent: cleaning up failures in water and sewage regulation comment from Richard Smith, partner at Sandstone Law
The House of Lords published a report stating that water companies are allowed to release raw sewage to prevent treatment plants being overwhelmed during heavy rain, and that stopping the dumping of sewage into rivers and the sea will require huge infrastructure spending and will probably push up water bills.
“For decades water companies have been allowed to release raw sewage to prevent treatment plants being overwhelmed during heavy rain. This was supposed to happen only in extreme situations, but over the years the allowance has been abused by the likes of ThamesWater and they have used it facilitate almost continuous discharge of sewage into
54 rivers and streams.
The report fromthe House of Lords is reassuring but it has been a long time coming. The water companies have been allowed to avoid this growing problem for decades and the government has ignored somany requests to act.
OFWAT and the Environment Agency have been poor regulators and enforcers. This is because they have allowed legal loopholes and exemptions in the discharge consents held by the water companies. These were agreed by the Environment Agency at the request of the water companies. All of this is known by DEFRA, the government department which is responsible for the condition of our watercourses.
| June 2023 |
www.draintraderltd.com
Somany rivers across the UK are dead or dying. Rivers are supposed to be a source of life. The problemhas become widespread, and nothing was done for years byMPs, despite numerous local residents’groups and parish councils trying to be heard.
It cannot be right that in relation to the protection of such valuable elements of the environment, privatised utility companies can be allowed to focusmore on shareholder confidence and financial returns than protecting the environment.
So far, natural habitats, flora and fauna have paid for this inaction and disingenuous behaviour, and now customers are going to have to pay to fix it over the next 25 years”
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