A report from the Chair of the Environment Agency (EA) released last week revealed that Southern Water – the utility company that supplies to the Isle of Wight – had fallen to a one-star rating.
Emma Howard Boyd began her report by pointing out that last year the environmental performance of England’s nine water and sewerage companies “was the worst we have seen for years”.
Southern Water (SW) fell to one-star, the bottom of the EA’s star ratings, meaning their performance was terrible across the board.
SW performed significantly below target
Although the total pollution incidents (category 1 to 3) decreased slightly across the nine water companies in England, Southern Water continued to perform significantly below target (red) for the Environmental Performance Assessment (EPA) sewerage incidents metric.
Discharging treated wastewater
Again, across the nine water companies, 98.7 per cent of sewage treatment works and water treatment works were compliant with permit conditions for discharging treated wastewater showing no long term trend for improvement – Southern Water performed significantly below target (red) for this EPA metric.
Serious pollution incidents
In relation to serious pollution incidents more than half were from assets of three water companies (Anglian Water – 14, Southern Water – 12 and Thames Water – 12).
Southern Water had a threefold increase in serious incidents compared to 2020. Southern Water is one of six water companies performed significantly below target (red) for this EPA metric – the highest number of water companies since the introduction of EPA.
Southern Water and South West Water were the only two water companies to perform significantly below target (red) for this EPA metric – Southern Water for the third year in a row and South West Water for the eleventh year in a row (since the start of the EPA)
Self-reporting incidents
However, there is hope, Southern Water were one of four companies who performed better than target (green) for self-reporting of incidents.
Southern Water provide the Beach Buoy service – a Website where residents can see details of recent incidents.
Discharge of treated wastewater
In relation to compliance with permits to discharge treated wastewater from STW and WTW (not storm overflows), Southern Water performed significantly below target (red).
Waste permit compliance
In England in 2021, there were 27 incidents (including four significant impacts to air and 20 minor impact to air) relating to waste permit compliance – over half of the incidents were related to two permitted operations – six from an Anglian Water site and eight from a Southern Water site.
Southern Water was also below target in relation to progress with environmental improvement schemes
Security of water supply
In relation to security of water supply and how the actual supply demand balance is managed, Southern Water performed significantly below target (red) with a score of 97. Seven of the nine water companies reported a score of 100 and green status.
For water resources planning, Southern Water was the only company with significant issues. It had a significant supply shortage due to outage (assets not in operation) and non-delivery of a new supply scheme.
You can read the full report on the Government Website.
SW: Our performance last year was not good enough
News OnTheWight has asked Southern Water for their response to the points raised in the report.
Toby Willison, Southern Water’s Director of Quality and Environment, told News OnTheWight,
“Our performance last year was not good enough – we are committed to doing better for our customers.
“We know we have a long way to go, however new investment and new ways of working, including major upgrades to our control centre and pumping stations, and the introduction of tens of thousands of digital monitors across our network, are already making a difference and delivering positive change.
“We continue to be open and honest about our environmental performance, and continue to work extremely closely with the Environment Agency and other stakeholders to improve and protect our environment.”
Article edit
1.20pm 18th Jul 2022 – SW comment added
Image: Scott Rodgerson under CC BY 2.0
