Water companies in the UK made more than £340m in revenue last year by pouring billions of litres of industrial and commercial wastewater into sewage treatment works that experts say are not designed to remove most chemicals, leaving pollutants to pass into rivers, seas and farmland. Water companies are required by law to take industrial wastewater and issue permits called “trade-effluent consents” that allow businesses to send it to sewage works, though water companies can refuse applications. However, no independent regulator oversees the trade-effluent process and there is no central register, so Watershed Investigations, the Guardian and the campaign group River Action compiled a database of 26,000 consents, providing the first ever national picture of the system.
The investigation found an annual total of 608bn litres of industrial wastewater entering sewage works from sites such as power stations, pharmaceutical plants, food factories, hospitals, abattoirs and waste facilities. The permits are issued and enforced by the water companies themselves, with environmental regulators having no direct role. Most sewage works only have biological treatment facilities, which are not designed to remove industrial chemicals, including flame retardants, Pfas, solvents and pharmaceuticals.
Some permits on the database feature chemicals such as cyanide, chromium, cadmium and mercury. Watershed has mapped every sewage treatment works and the industrial companies permitted to send waste to each one. Pollutants that survive treatment are discharged into rivers, lakes and seas as “treated effluent”, while those captured in sewage sludge are spread on farmland as fertiliser.
The waste also adds to the overloading of sewer networks that triggers raw sewage spills, which have caused outrage, community protests and calls for the industry to be nationalised so that profits can be reinvested in improving the system rather than going to shareholders. United Utilities made the most revenue from industrial waste last year, at £61.6m, followed by Yorkshire Water at £48.8m. However, these companies included revenues from tankered waste in their figures, while some others did not.
Welsh Water, Scottish Water and Wessex Water said they routed commercial tankered waste through separate companies within their groups. Thames Water has the largest volume of permitted industrial sewage, at 113bn litres, followed by United Utilities at 105bn litres and Severn Trent Water at 79bn litres. Across the sector, revenues from receiving industrial and commercial wastewater have risen sharply in five years, with Anglian Water’s increasing by 62%.
The industry expert said water companies had “a financial incentive to accept far more toxic material than they should”. The permit regime was very old and not fit for purpose, they added. An Environment Agency (EA) officer said landfill leachate was its “greatest concern” because of the harmful chemical cocktail it can contain.
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