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PARIS, Aug. 25 (AP) EU lawmakers have a new post-Brexit reason to anger Britain: Britain’s sewage overflow seeps into the English Channel and North Sea.
Heavy rains last week after weeks of dry weather flooded parts of Britain’s sewage systems, causing untreated wastewater to be dumped into rivers and oceans.
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The issue is a long-standing one in the UK, where regulators are investigating possible breaches of licences by six major water companies, which environmental groups claim failed to make necessary repairs.
This is primarily an issue in the UK, where people were warned to stay away from dozens of beaches last week, raising concerns about public health and the destruction of wildlife.
British activist group Surfers Against Sewage reported that sewer overflow alerts from 171 locations in England and Wales spilled sewage into bathing waters this summer, a total of 654 alerts.
But three French lawmakers in the European Parliament sent a letter to the European Commission on Wednesday, warning that sewage could also threaten EU bathing waters, fishing grounds and biodiversity.
“The English Channel and the North Sea are not dumping grounds,” said Stephanie Yon-Courtin, a member of the European Parliament’s fisheries committee and local MP for Normandy.
“We cannot tolerate that the environment, the economic activity of our fishermen and the health of our citizens are being put in grave danger by the UK’s repeated neglect of wastewater management,” she said.
MPs have asked the European Commission to “use all the political and legal tools at its disposal” to find a solution, accusing Britain of violating a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU.
They said that while the UK no longer adheres to EU environmental standards, it remains a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Sea and has an obligation to protect shared waters.
The European Commission said it had so far not contacted London about the complaints. “We will take this matter further at our discretion,” committee spokeswoman Dana Spinant said on Thursday.
Britain’s Conservative government has rejected criticism, saying it has tightened water regulation since Brexit.
“We also have laws in place for water utilities to reduce the frequency and number of discharges from storm overflows, and require water utilities to install new monitors to report in real time any sewage discharges in their areas,” the Ministry of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said. told the BBC.
But last week, the opposition Liberal Democrats released a report claiming wastewater discharges were not being properly recorded because much of the required monitoring equipment was either not working properly or had not been installed.
While UK water companies are normally prohibited from dumping untreated wastewater, they are allowed to make such discharges when heavy rain threatens sewage treatment plants.
Environmental groups claim that some companies use the exception to save money and avoid upgrading their systems.
During the Brexit negotiations, the EU has repeatedly expressed concern that Britain will abandon the bloc’s strict environmental standards and bow to commercial pressure to create a more deregulated system that could put their shared environment at risk.
The trade and cooperation agreement, which comes into effect in early 2021 after the UK leaves the EU, does not specify how to deal with storm overflows.
British Water, which represents water and wastewater companies, said its members were investing £3bn in tackling overflows as part of a national plan to improve the environment between 2020 and 2025, acknowledging that “action is urgently needed to tackle storm overflows.” flow and waste water treatment projects overflow environment.”
“Water companies cannot do this alone, so we also call on governments, regulators, water companies, agriculture and others to come together as soon as possible to develop a comprehensive national plan to achieve our rivers and the waterways we all want to see ,” said the water industry group. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from the Syndicated News feed, the body of the content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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