Under-pressure utility giant Thames Water wants to be able to continue to dump sewage into the River Wandle, a rare chalk stream, until 2035.
Murky business: this is the River Wandle during a previous incident when Thames Water allowed the rare chalk stream to be heavily polluted
That shocking admission emerged at the last meeting for Sutton Council’s scrutiny committee this year.
The River Wandle rises in South Croydon, flowing north-west, mostly underground through Waddon, emerging above ground at Waddon Ponds and Wandle Park, before continuing its course to Carshalton, through Merton and on to the Thames.
Chalk streams are exceedingly rare, with only around 200 in the whole world.
Of these, 85% are found in southern England, and there are just two of those flowing through London. The River Wandle is one of those.
Chalk streams are supposed to have very clear water that’s rich in minerals and attracts a wide variety of aquatic plants and fish. Brown trout, chub, barbel and roach have been found in the Wandle.
After two centuries of industrialisation through south London, using the Wandle’s waters to power tobacco mills and for other processes, much progress had been made in the latter part of the 20th Century to restore the Wandle to a more natural state.
Concerned celebrity: Feargal Sharkey has walked the length of the Wandle and remains angry about Thames Water’s neglect
But in the past decade, there have been regular complaints about untreated sewage being released into the Wandle by Thames Water. As recently as last May, after being implicated in the latest shabby sewage spill, Thames Water vowed to “put things right”.
The plight of the Wandle has attracted the ire of Feargal Sharkey, the anti-pollution and environmental campaigner, the former lead singer of The Undertones, who has been an occasional guest on TV programmes such as Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing to talk about the damage being done by profit-driven water companies.
And now Thames Water is claiming that they can’t afford to undertake vital infrastructure upgrades to protect the Wandle for another 12 years, in a serious threat to the river’s biodiversity.
At the Sutton Council meeting, Thames Water claimed it is currently carrying out an ecological assessment to determine the priorities for new works expected to be carried out around Beddington, where they had promised to invest £611million over a 25-year period.
They admitted that, beyond work on the Thames Tideway tunnel, no work has been carried out on the Wandle in the last five years, while their sewage discharges have continued.
According to the South East Rivers Trust, there were 13 separate incidents between December 2022 and this month, leading to over 25 hours of discharge. An incident on December 8 this year was investigated over heightened levels of ammonium, which may have occurred because of a fly-tip in the river.
“Sewage dumping and other pollutants are putting it under threat once again,” said Sutton councillor Bobby Dean, a member of the committee.
“The Government must get its act together and hold the water companies to account for their failure to protect our local river.”
Thames Water, meanwhile, have somewhat complacently relied on an Environment Agency rating of the River Wandle to decide that their Beddington sewage treatment works is not among their top 250 plants that will receive a more urgent upgrade.
Thames Water also sought to shift the blame on to local residents.
“We’re aware of the problems caused by misconnections on the Wandle, which are mostly wrongly connected pipes on private properties,” a spokesperson said.
“We have a programme of work to help rectify this, and last year we partnered with the South East Rivers Trust and local volunteers to identify misconnections in the area. Since 2020 we have identified 105 misconnections.
“We regard all discharges as unacceptable, and we have published plans to upgrade over 250 of our sewage treatment works and sewers.”
Read more: River from Tory Philp’s constituency runs brown with sewage
Read more: Rivers and environment are at peril from nation’s lawmakers
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