A new campaign calling for ten thousand people to stop paying their wastewater bills, to force companies to end the practice of pouring 11bn litres of raw sewage every year into UK rivers and seas, was launched on 15 November by Extinction Rebellion and local water action groups.
The Don’t Pay for Dirty Water campaign, which targets all of the major water companies, kicked off with a splash, with campaigners swimming beneath the sewage outflow into the River Roding in East London.
The organisers vow to sign up at least ten thousand people to withhold the wastewater or sewerage part of their water bill. By collectively withholding millions of pounds, the boycotters hope to pressure water companies and the government to fast-track infrastructure upgrades and stop diverting ordinary billpayers’ money into massive profits for shareholders while billpayers’ local waterways are poisoned.
Privatisation
People are refusing to pay their wastewater bills in response to water company’s ‘dirty’ practices
in The CanaryBritain's 'unbearable' sewerage problem is a warning against privatisation in Australia
in ABC NewsLast November, however, Trevaunance Cove turned brown with sewage. Lifeguards described the stench as "unbearable". The utility company responsible — South West Water — said heavy rains forced it to release the sewage and storm runoff to avoid the local filtration system becoming overwhelmed.
But the pollution event was no one-off. Two months prior, discharge alerts were in place at more than 100 beaches around the country, and in 2021, there were more than 370,000 such releases of raw sewage by water utilities across the United Kingdom. That year, another company, Southern Water, was fined a record 90 million pounds ($170 million) for dumping 21 billion litres of untreated sewage into protected marine areas off the southern coast of England.
Rivers and lakes have also been used as dump sites; there are credible reports that untreated sewage is spilled into natural waterways every two-and-a-half minutes. As temperatures across the UK have risen, there has been a growing backlash against the government's inability to fix the problem.
At the heart of the scandal is a decision taken in 1989 to sell off the country's water and sewerage industry.