Sewage dumped illegally in Windermere over 3 years
Baku, October 17, AZERTAC
A water company repeatedly dumped millions of litres of raw sewage illegally into one of England's most famous lakes over a three-year period, BBC reports.
More than 140 million litres of waste were pumped into Windermere between 2021 and 2023 at times when it was not permitted, our analysis shows, and United Utilities failed to report most of it.
It means the company's illegal dumping of sewage into the lake went on for far longer, and was far more extensive, than was previously known.
United Utilities said some of its sewage releases into Windermere were "potentially non-compliant" but that it self-reports "over 94% of potential pollution incidents to the Environment Agency".
Matt Staniek, a campaigner against sewage pollution and founder of Save Windermere, said Windermere was “the jewel in the crown of the Lake District National Park, and it's being used as an open sewer”.
It is sometimes necessary to release sewage into rivers and lakes to stop the wastewater system from being overwhelmed by heavy rain but this pollution can damage the environment, causing harmful algal blooms and even killing fish.
In January this year - after BBC Panorama revealed the company had downplayed the severity of dozens of pollution incidents, some involving Windermere - United Utilities retrospectively reported some discharges into the lake from October 2023 onwards.
But since then the BBC has obtained United Utilities operations data going back to January 2021 which shows that illegal discharges had been taking place for more than three years, far longer than the discharges in the four months the company retrospectively reported.
The data involved Glebe Road pumping station in Bowness-on-Windermere, the only site which discharges directly into the lake, which is designed to pump wastewater from the local area to the nearby sewage works for treatment.
It is authorised by the Environment Agency to release raw sewage into the lake in certain circumstances during wet weather, as long as it is pumping at least 245 litres of sewage a second to the treatment works.
That condition, written in the site’s environmental permit, is supposed to protect Windermere and ensure that, even in wet weather, most sewage is sent for treatment. Failing to comply with the permit is a criminal offence.
The BBC analysed data detailing the flow of sewage through the station and the times when waste had been dumped into the lake. We found the station had failed to comply with the permit by discharging sewage into the lake at times when it had not been pumping the required amount for treatment.
As a result, sewage which should have been sent for treatment was dumped into the lake.
Permit breaches should be reported to the Environment Agency, but United Utilities failed to do this for most of the discharges identified by the BBC between the start of 2021 and the end of 2023.
In those three years, we found that United Utilities illegally pumped sewage into Windermere for 165 hours, of which at least 118 hours was not reported to the environmental regulator.
A spokesperson said as part of ongoing work to reduce spills in 2024 the company discovered a "technical issue in the configuration of the Windermere system" which meant that some of the discharges from the Glebe Road pumping station were "potentially non-compliant".
The company has "implemented system changes to prevent a reoccurrence", the spokesperson said.
Campaigner Matt Staniek said the water company was "incompetent" if it did not know the sewage discharges were occurring
United Utilities also said it is starting construction on additional storage and treatment facilities around Windermere, to reduce sewage discharges.
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