There will be "significant bill increases" for Welsh Water customers in order to tackle pollution in rivers, bosses have warned. The price increase is needed to address pollution in rivers which is "not meeting the right standards".
The not-for-profit water company told the Welsh Affairs Committee that there needed to be a "phase of significant bill increases to try and tackle" the quality of rivers in Wales. Steve Wilson, managing director of wastewater services, described how five of the "most iconic rivers in Wales, if not the UK" are not meeting the right standards.
Six of the worst polluted rivers in the UK are in Wales. In just one year England and Wales’ waterways had sewage pumped into them for at least 3.4m hours, according to recent figures. Any rise in bills is likely to happen over a number of years as Welsh Water will have to apply to water regulator Ofwat to increase its prices.
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The River Severn, which runs between England and Wales, was the most polluted river and had seen 28,741 hours of sewage pumped into it on 2,656 occasions by Severn Trent Water. The rivers in Wales included in the list are the River Teifi, River Usk, River Wye, River Tawe, Menai Strait, and River Taf.
Mr Wilson described how the spillages are related to storm overflow, adding that Wales is in a unique position that it receives more rainfall than England.
He said: "Post the 1970s, sewers would be separated, so you would have pipes for the rainwater coming off the roofs in the yards, and you would have a separate pipe for the foul sewage, but most sewers built prior to that time are combined; they take the rainwater as well. When you did not have sewage works at the coastline, it helped to get a lot of rainwater in those pipes, to get it flushed out to sea. Over time, we have invested in the sewage treatment works.
"We have improved the discharges from those, but the sewer network in Wales is still 60% combined sewers. Secondly, it rains more in Wales, unfortunately, so we are seeing more discharges from that sewer network. We have to invest now in the sewer network to improve that."
A £1 billion investment program is planned for the next five-year period to address the problems - which is over four times more than the last five-year period. Mr Wilson added that tackling the sewage works which is causing "phosphorus issues" in the SAC rivers is the first thing the company are going to do.
Followed by: "Keeping bathing water quality up and protecting our beaches is a priority, and then storm overflows causing environmental harm will be the first on the list."
Mr Wilson revealed the massive cost to get storm overflows in Wales down to spilling 10-20 times a year it will cost between £14 billion and £20 billion. He added: "And the Welsh Government’s data at the moment is saying that if you want to remove them, we are up to £40 billion."
Welsh Water control more 36,000 kilometres of sewers that take your dirty water away before it's cleaned at local treatment works and the clean water released into rivers and seas. Unfortunately, most of this network was built over 100 years ago during the Victoria era. Estimates suggest it would cost between £9 billion and £14 billion to remove CSOs completely from the network and would take decades. Welsh Water say it would make water and sewerage bills unaffordable.
Though it is obvious how the sewers get overwhelmed during heavy rain and storms, it begs the question why there are so many releases during dry weather. According to Welsh Water, this is mainly due to blockages caused by flushing objects like nappies and wet wipes. These cause blockages which in turn case a backlog that is then released into rivers before it can go into homes.
It is worth noting that there is no "eject button" that anyone presses to release this wastewater. It is an automatic release built into the system when it reaches a certain pressure.
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