Agenda item

To receive a report from the Director of Place and Economy and to hear from Councillor O’Brien from Lewes District Council and Clarissa Newell the Area Environment Manager from the Environment Agency. Discussion to follow.

The Committee had before it, and NOTED a *report from the Director of Place and Economy on Motion 583 Protecting Rivers and Seas on the progress in relation to the work of the Council relating to Motion 583 and water quality management.

 

The following was highlighted by the Director of Place and Economy within the report:

 

·         Liaising with the Environment Agency (EA) and South West Water (SWW) regarding attendance at meetings.

·         Progressing the commissioning of skilled consultants on behalf of the Authority to undertake a water cycle study.

·         Researching how other local planning authorities sought additional information from the Water Companies through the Planning Process and the success (or not) they have had.

·         The additional requests for information from SWW as a consultee in support of major planning applications. Asking further information around which treatment works would be managing sewage arising from developments and whether they had the capacity to do so.

·         Asking whether the water company had the information available to assess the impact on the number or duration of any sewage discharges into any local rivers or seas and asking for that information to be shared.

 

Councillor Emily O’Brien from Lewes District Council who was the Cabinet Member for Climate, Nature & Food Systems gave a presentation about their aims and how they had gone about their work to improve water quality:

 

• Less than one in five rivers had good ecological status and none had good chemical status. There was a loss of fish. There were a few problems around water companies breaking rules.  With regard to Stormwater Discharge (CSO) under permit - a water company had to design, construct and maintain sewerage system according to best technical knowledge not entailing excessive cost (BTKNEEC).  CSO (storm water discharge) was clearly being used as the new normal and as such was an abuse of the system.

 

• Specific Issue – Duty to connect. The Developer had the right to build and the water companies had to accept this. A Council cannot refuse planning applicants on the basis of storm overflow. Water companies also struggled with this legislation.

 

• Lewes Council passed a motion which had unanimous cross-party support and a lot of public support. A Council can only do so much locally, but one of the things they could do was to shine a spotlight through demonstrations and through news coverage. There were signs that the water companies were taking note.

 

• Now asking the water company, the cumulative impact of any large scale new development on sewage discharge into local rivers and seas, when they respond to planning applications. Not just network capacity (pipes) but treatment capacity (sewage works). They would only request, not demand.

 

• They added a section on the impact on watercourses in the Planning Committee report to shine a spotlight on the issue but not made it a material condition.

 

• Lewes Council were now using Grampian conditions.

 

• Asked Natural England who had the responsibility for monitoring water quality at local Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) to carry out a new assessment on their local river which showed deterioration and specifically mentioned waste water treatment works as well as ongoing problems with agriculture.

 

• Various Councils had passed similar motions following which a cross-Council group had been set up including Council Leaders, Officers and Cabinet Members which had been very useful.  The work had given their Planning Committees greater confidence to refuse developments backed up by the legal opinion that they had obtained. There was now a Link with OFWAT due to the Councils banding together.

 

Other positive action:

 

·         Input about sewerage discharge.

·         “Rights of Rivers” approach and “Motion for the Ocean”.

·         Rain gardens to slow water run-off.

·         Raw guidelines.

·         Time for Catchment partnership.

·         Chalk stream restoration to restore a stream’s natural flow which led to greater biodiversity.

Discussion took place with regards to:

 

• Further plans – Lewes Council were refreshing their climate and nature action plan.
• Second land purchase – nature restoration projects – primarily nature based schemes.

 

Support from Environmental Non Government Organisation’s (NGOs), Members of Parliament - no national connections had been made but strong connections with local groups. They had had a strong voice when a number of Councils took action together.

 

 

Clarissa Newell from the Environment Agency (EA) gave a presentation.

 

• The news was not all terrible – water quality had improved and there were less large incidents. Climate Change and the wetter winters were having an impact upon water quality.
• Ms Newell welcomed the Water Companies sharing data and the resulting transparency.
• The numbers quoted were permitted spills, they were diluted and not concentrated.
• They were reliant on water companies reporting the spills to them and on the national team to review the data. The EA scrutinise the data and were looking with National Government as to whether self-reporting data was the way forward.

 

They were working on other improvements as to how they regulate:

 

·         Influencing Government policy.

·         Improving habitat and increasing biodiversity net gain.

·         Encouraging investment in the environment.

·         Taking robust enforcement action.

·         Receiving plans from SWW regarding the improvement of their assets and plan for improved development.

·         Technology and how climate change was impacting how the environment reacts.

·         They were reviewing permit fees for SWW, this would result in 2 new water industry teams that would regulate in Devon and Cornwall.

Operational Teams:

 

·         3 land and water teams (24 officers)

·         1 agricultural team (12 officers)

Those officers were the same ones that had to respond to Freedom of Information requests and to other enquiries to the point that 1 or 2officers were constantly engaged in responding to enquiries which causes delays on case files. The Environment Agency want to share knowledge broadly with local authorities in the hope that it would reduce the number of requests that they get and so free officers to work on case files.

 

Responsibilities: within England the EA were responsible for:

·         Regulating major industry and waste

·         Treatment of contaminated land

·         Water quality and resources

·         Fisheries

·         Inland river, estuary and harbour navigations

·         Conservation and ecology

They were also responsible for managing the risk of flooding from main rivers, reservoirs, estuaries and the sea.

 

Priorities:

·         Work with businesses and other organisations to manage the use of resources.

·         Increase the resilience of people, property and businesses to the risks of flooding and coastal erosion.

·         Protecting and improving water, land and biodiversity.

·         Improve the way they work as a regulator to protect people and the environment and support sustainable growth.

More information was available on Environment Agency: EA2025 creating a better place (Use this number to report a pollution incident: 0800 807060).

 

The predominant pressures in the area were from diffuse source agriculture, rural land management as well as point sources from the water industry, trade and private discharges.

 

The assessment of 58 rivers classified in 2022 within Mid Devon District Council (MDDC) area under the Water Framework Directive revealed that the Overall Ecological Status showed 

• 17% in the Good category.
• 62% in Moderate.
• 16% in Poor.
• 5% in Bad.

 

The Ecological Status of Rivers in mid Devon was similar to the regional and national averages.

 

Further scrutiny into the challenges faced by the water bodies highlighted that most failings were attributable to phosphate, underpinning that the significant water management issues were mostly related to agriculture and rural land development.

 

Regarding the question where atlantic salmon populations had fallen and insect populations were almost entirely absent nowadays following research the EA do recognise that there were pressures in the catchment as a result of agriculture and diffuse run off, water company and private sewage discharges as well as from water resources and climate change, however, their data did not support the statement in the question. As an example a fish survey on the River Varlet, Simons Bath in 2023 had 51 salmon, regarding salmon numbers it was also worth pointing out that as migratory fish, they face numerous pressures not solely relating to river quality but also barriers to passage and marine fisheries as well. In September 2023 they found over 230 mayfly lava in a sample at the Exe bar confluence and had found no evidence for a decline in river invertebrates in the Exe. Their most complete data set in the catchment at Thorverton had constantly shown high status for invertebrates since the year 2000.

 

Enforcement and Compliance

In April 2023 the Environment Agency tried a new method of prosecuting SWW where they bundled a number of cases together to expose their poor environmental management. One of the incidents at Crediton where SWW cleaned out a ferric sulphate tank and allowed the wash water to enter the River Creedy turning the bed of the river orange and killing hundreds of fish. SWW was fined £2.1m. In January 2024 their case against Bycott Farm, Halberton was heard in court following pollution incidents on the farm in October and December 2021 which impacted the Spratford Stream. The farm was fined £4,300 and hundreds of thousands of pounds had been spent by the farm to improve infrastructure for storing slurry and containing contaminated water.

 

The EA continued to investigate serious pollution incidents and incidents of run-off from development sites, and had issued guidance in relation to those.

 

The EA did not warn and inform the public when permitted spills were happening. However, the local water company SWW did.

 

Event duration monitoring (EDM) data provided a robust and consistent way of monitoring how often and for how long storm overflows were used.

 

The agency in the South West had one Agricultural Regulatory Taskforce of 13 officers focussing on the river catchments with a lower quality status. In 2023/24 they inspected 400 farms.

 

The EA was conducting a trial in the Creedy and Yeo catchments using satellite imagery and remote sensing to identify potential breaches of FRFW, ie bare fields and trace pathway to watercourse.

 

Ofwat duties included furthering the resilience objective to secure the long-term resilience of water companies’ water supply and wastewater systems; and to secure that they take steps to enable them, in the long term, to meet the need for water supplies and wastewater services.

 

The EA worked to make sure that water companies planned for ever expanding development, they agreed actions that it needed to take with the water companies, but actions for the future were regulated by Ofwat.

 

Discussion took place with regards to:

 

• How income was spent.
• Citizen’s Space – a useful space the EA would encourage the Council to use. A high public interest site that the EA would use to consult the public. The public should always be able to comment on new permits.
• With regard to fly tipping in waterways the EA were only responsible where it was organised crime doing the fly tipping, otherwise it was the Local Authority’s responsibility.
• Ofwat were the regulatory body that made sure the public were getting value for money and that the water companies were investing.
• The EA was reliant on SWW self-reporting discharges. The EA would investigate, however, SWW told them what category of incident it was. The EA did not have the manpower to go out to a Category 3 or lower incidents but with new manpower coming soon, hopefully, they would then be able to attend category 3 incidents.
• Category 1 was a serious incident, Category 2 was less serious but there may had been fish killed, Category 3 was a low impact and Category 4 was no impact.
• If the ownership of the area where the pollution had occurred was disputed, how did the EA handle such problems? SWW shared their whole network online with the EA and they could access records of Devon County Council.
• The national data monitoring team (Environmental Data Monitoring Review) would be looking to take enforcement action where they had sites that they were focussed on where the numbers appeared to be particularly high.
• With noticeable climate change, what was the EA doing with regard to water storage and collection?  Over the last 2 summers, EA teams had worked hard with water companies to plan new water resources and working with the water companies to look at solutions such as desalination and water transference. They were also working with farmers about slurry storage when the land was too wet to allow spreading. Legally farmers should have 4 months storage and new rules would request 6 months storage.

 

A list of questions had been sent to Ms Newell and the Chairman thanked Ms Newell for her presentation and asked her to provide a written response within 14 days.

 

Note: * Report previously circulated.