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Rivers and environment are at peril from nation’s lawmakers

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CROYDON COMMENTARY: Public outrage and an MP’s letter to the water companies won’t keep our waterways clean, argues IAN KIERANS, who says that the weak regulatory system exists to protect big business and the status quo

Murky business: the River Wandle during a previous incident in 2020 when Thames Water allowed the chalk stream to be heavily polluted. Incidents occur repeatedly because the company is allowed to do it by law

Thames Water dumps effluent and endangers our communities and people at will.

But are they the culprit?

Sarah Jones MP wrote to Thames Water. What is interesting is that she chose to write to the company and not to the Environment Agency. Why? Perhaps it was because what occurred around the sewage outflow into the brook in a public park was legal.

The Environment Agency has a role and although in recent months taken action against some of the worst offenders, they are ineffectual.

I believe they are doing as much as they can with the resource they have. Hampering their efforts are a couple of key restraints, perhaps intentionally applied by government.

1. The legislation that allows this kind of dumping
2. The lack of resources for the EA to police large companies and monitor effectively their activities so as to prevent this (and other issues) from occurring

One could argue that the EA remit is not to protect the environment per se but to protect certain parts and allow ”legalised” detriment to occur.

There is a balance in society and for it to thrive there needs to be the understanding that to alienate sections of the population and ignore their needs and concerns openly or by stealth does not allow that society to thrive or grow,

The persistent erosion of accountability and responsibility by altering, weakening, tweaking or failing to resource processes to prevent or enforce laws has gone on long enough by our legislators.

Laws are made but neither prevention or enforcement of those laws are resourced. Even under Civil Law, with the constraints placed on litigators who have suffered extreme detriment and death, there is little chance of a successful prosecution, with the inordinate hurdles to meet statutory bars for the “normal”, non-millionaire residents.

Or in common vernacular, we all get treated like mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed shit!

Read more: After decades of clean-ups, we’re still polluting precious rivers
Read more: River from Tory Philp’s constituency runs brown with sewage

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