Many of you may have seen last week’s alarming news that raw sewage may have been discharged into the King’s Dyke river near King’s Delph, writes Green Party councillor Imtiaz Ali.

On Monday, September 23, concerned residents began sharing reports on social media, and investigations have since confirmed that nearly 1,000 fish have died as a result of the discharge.

What I find unbelievable is that we still allow water companies, driven by shareholder profits, to dump raw sewage into our rivers and lakes.

Anglian Water is not alone; numerous other water companies have also been in the news for sewage dumping.

Anglian Water is owned by a private consortium, Osprey, which includes various pension funds, notably the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

This means Canadian pensioners are financially benefiting from the continued and illegal dumping of raw untreated sewage into King’s Dyke. Anglian Water was one of six companies named by The Guardian in June 2022 as being investigated for potential illegal dumping of raw sewage and was issued formal notices to provide further information.

The Environment Agency has been notified of the recent sewage dumping, initially attributed to a pump failure. This failure led to sewage being discharged for 23 hours! The oxygen levels in the water dropped and ammonia levels were elevated, resulting in the death of many hundreds of fish. Residents reported seeing dead fish on the water’s surface and a foul odour in the air. To put this latest spillage into context, in 2023 alone, over 4,000,000 hours of raw sewage were discharged into rivers and seas. We shouldn’t think of this is an isolated incident by any means.

A key promise in the Green Party’s manifesto from this year’s General Election was the renationalisation of water companies. The Greens pledged to establish an infrastructure fund dedicated to improving sewage and water treatment and committed to increasing funding for the Environment Agency, the public body tasked with enhancing environments for both people and wildlife.

As a resident, private citizen, and someone who enjoys nature, I find it difficult to understand how we permit water companies to discharge sewage into our waterways.

I believe that the Environment Agency should be given additional funding to police the environment. More powers need to be given to fine the water companies and enforce action to clean up our waters following spillages.

And I still can’t get away from the fact that literal “poo” is being pumped into our waters by shareholder owned companies and no-one seems to be batting an eyelid! The water companies have been taking billions of pounds out of the industry and paying their shareholders and have not invested in infrastructure, and now claim that any changes to their practices will mean an increase in bills.

We’ve been taken for a ride for too long and this has to stop. We need to renationalise the water companies, because the current model just isn’t working.

As the Dutch philosopher Li An Phoa said: “The sign of a healthy economy should be a drinkable river”.