Raw sewage floating past the garden is a sight that one family in Wargrave has said it has ‘got used’ to at their riverside home.
Catherine Abbott, who lives in a house by the river Loddon, told the LDRS the sight of raw sewage streaming past her garden after being discharged from a nearby Thames Water treatment plant has become more common.
She said: “It’s one of those things we’ve got used to over the years, but it is getting worse.
“We have seen raw sewage in the river, and that’s a regular occurrence – it’s not a one-off.
“We used to swim in the river. I’m not sure that we would now because kids have been ill and you do hear of a lot of people being quite ill now swimming in the river.
“And you don’t really want to get into the water when you see there’s poo there.”
She added: “I was weeding by the river about six months ago and there was raw sewage as I was standing there.”
Thames Water said it only discharges raw sewage into rivers when its treatment works are unable to cope with the volume of water they have to process, such as during heavy rain.
The company has faced accusations that it has neglected investing in pipes and treatment works to cope with high volumes of sewage, while paying millions of pounds in dividends to internal shareholders.
For its part, Thames Water said it needs to be able to increase water bills by 40% over five years so that it can invest some £18.7 billion into improving its sewage network over the same period.
But the plans have to be signed off by water regulator Ofwat – which has refused to allow the increase.
Thames Water is also burdened with more than £15 billion of debt – and there are fears the company could collapse.
Liberal Democrat party leader Ed Davey called for the government to take over Thames Water temporarily when he visited Catherine’s house on Monday this week.
He told the LDRS: “[The plan would] get Thames Water out of the mess it is in at the moment, ensures that consumers and businesses still get the water that they need and things like sewage works can function.”
Mr Davey also blamed the Conservative government for failing to regulate the water industry properly. He also criticised Wokingham MP John Redwood, who has previously spoken of how he argued for the water industry to be nationalised in 1989.
But Mr Redwood said nationalisation would be ‘a particularly bad idea’ as it would mean the government might have to take on Thames Water’s debt and compensate its shareholders.
In a recent blog post he wrote: “Nationalisation is a particularly bad idea. Existing shareholders would need to be compensated for the enforced sale of their shares.
“After deciding what to pay for the assets the state would then need to find additional money to increase the investment spend. It would all add up to a very large bill for taxpayers.”
