Breach delivery
Turd of the Week , Issue 1673 AFTER its drubbing on Channel 4's sewage scandal drama Dirty Business, the Environment Agency is on a blitz to prove that it is a watchdog with teeth.

On local news sites from Yorkshire to Somerset, the EA has been boasting of its heightened "surveillance" of the water network which has included 10,000 inspections of wastewater sites in England in the past year.

Helen Wakeham, the Environment Agency's director for water, said: "We are changing how we operate, with better data, our largest ever enforcement workforce, and greater powers to do our job effectively."

The usual suspects
The regulator said 1,800 of these annual inspections were at sites belonging to Severn Trent Water such as storm tanks and sewage treatment works. How many breaches of permit conditions did these inspections uncover in the Severn Trent region? Almost a third of all those inspected – a whopping 530 breaches in total.

The EA said the findings led to "real-world" action with demands for improvement issued to Severn Trent which supplies water and sewage services to 4.6m customers across the Midlands.

Severn Trent boasted an impressive four-star environmental performance in 2024, according to the EA. But, as the latest inspections show, the firm's high rating still masks massive environmental issues.

Surfers Against Sewage says last year saw more than 36,000 separate raw sewage discharges from storm overflows in the Severn Trent region and 13 sickness reports were made to the campaigning group.

Severn Trent's worst sewage overflow was at Church Stretton sewage treatment works which leaked waste into Quinny Brook in South Shropshire for 3,434 hours – nearly five months. In the River Derwent there were 1,971 incidents of sewage dumping, an average of 5.4 times a day.

Cleaning up
Meanwhile £356m was paid out in dividends to Severn Trent Water shareholders in 2024/25 and customer bills will be rising an average of 47 percent over the five years from 2025-30, according to regulator Ofwat.

Last month marked the departure of Liv Garfield, Severn Trent's former chief executive who had stayed on to hand over to new chief executive James Jesic, who took over in January.

Jesic's basic salary is £775,000, slightly lower than Garfield's £873,000, but it will include similar bonus and incentive packages. Garfield regularly earned more than £3m a year, including long-term bonuses and pension. Great job!