Sheffield pollution: Water regulator proposes £47 million fine for Yorkshire Water over sewage management
Ofwat has proposed a £47 million penalty for Yorkshire Water over the water firms’ management of wastewater treatment and sewer systems.
A total of £168 million in fines has been proposed by the regulator, with £104 million to Thames Water and £17 million for Northumbrian water.
The water firms have come under heavy criticism for releasing too much pollution into rivers.
In an announcement on Tuesday morning, Ofwat said the firms "failed to ensure that discharges of untreated wastewater from storm overflows occur only in exceptional circumstances, which has resulted in harm to the environment and their customers".
It said the firms had failed to upgrade their assets where necessary, and had been slow to grasp their obligations to limit pollution from storm overflows.
Ofwat chief executive David Black stressed that the burden of £168 million of fines on three water firms will fall on investors, rather than customers.
He said it is "not at all" the case that the penalties on Thames Water, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water will result in higher bills.
He said: "Customers can be reassured these fines sit with investors, not with customers of the water companies."
Ofwat said more than two-thirds of Thames Water's wastewater treatment works with Flow to Full Treatment (FFT) permits had capacity and operational issues, while one in six of its storm overflows were found to be in breach of regulations.
45 percent of Yorkshire Water’s storm overflows were in breach of regulations, making it the worst of the three in this metric.
16% of its treatment works had capacity and operational issues, significantly less than Thames Water (over 65%) but more than Northumbrian Water (3%).
Meanwhile, Charles Watson , chairman of campaign group River Action, said: "Thankfully the water regulator, for so long toothless, is finally waking up to the scale of the public's outrage and we are starting to see some meaningful penalties being imposed upon the worst offenders."
He also criticised water companies for paying out billions in shareholder dividends in recent years.
"Until the ability of these polluting companies to hand out so much cash is severely curtailed, pollution will continue to be a highly profitable activity with inadequate incentives for the water companies to fix their creaking infrastructure and stop filling our rivers with raw sewage," he said.
A Yorkshire Water spokesman said the firm is "disappointed" with the proposed fine and that it had "co-operated fully" with the investigation.
The spokesman pointed to a £180 million plan to reduce sewage discharges before April 2025.
He added: "We will be responding to the notice by 10th September."
Earlier this year, Yorkshire paid a £150,000 penalty to the Environment Agency (EA) for an earlier "unauthorised sewage discharge" into Sheffield's River Don.
The EA said it found sewage at Kirk Bridge Dike in Darnall in April 2020.
Yorkshire Water said the spill was initially caused by a blockage in the sewage network.
A spokesperson for the firm said: "We know incidents of this kind are distressing and when things go wrong, we understand we have a responsibility to make it right and to prevent these things from happening at all."
Sewage spills by water companies into England's rivers and seas more than doubled last year, with 3.6 million hours of spills, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.