Examination of Witnesses (Questions 109-119)
28 OCTOBER 2004
MR JOHN
SEXTON, MR
ROY POINTER
AND MR
CLIVE HARWARD
Q109 Chairman: Good morning, gentlemen.
Thank you very much indeed for coming along. As you know, we are
conducting an inquiry into environmental crime and we are looking
at the whole regulatory regime. It will come as no surprise to
you to hear that you are here because you have had trouble with
the regulator, and have been fingered, as it were, as repeat offenders
in the past. We are therefore particularly interested in hearing
your reaction to the whole process in which you have been involved.
Thames Water particularly appears to have had considerable difficulties,
although some water companies, according to the Environment Agency
in Spotlight have been able to improve their performance.
Thames has had particular difficulty in doing so. Is there a particular
reason for that?
Mr Sexton: Mr Chairman, can I
start with a little bit of context about the scale of the water
industry and what we are doing in this area? You appreciate that
we are collecting waste from domestic and industrial premises.
We cover a large geographical area and have a huge number of individual
facilities. We have nearly 70,000 km of sewers and 13 million
customers connected. We have nearly 2,500 remote pumping stations.
The system has to take waste from domestic and industrial consumers.
We have no control over the inputs to that area, and therefore
there is always going to be much, much more risk of incidents
happening over a large network than there is, for example, in
a normal industrial process where you have a single site where
you are in control of your premises and the activities going on.
The Environment Agency recognised that when they appeared before
you in January. As far as our historical record is concerned,
the Environment Agency has publicly, and privately in meetings
with us and Ofwat, confirmed that our environmental performance
has improved considerably. If you look at the number of incidents,
there are a number of different factors involved. There is a clear
weather-related factor because our weather hugely influences overflows
from the system. You will appreciate that the law as it stands
gives us strict liability if there is any overflow from the system
into a river, and even where there are third-party blockages.
In law we are responsible, and we cannot put up a due diligence
defence. If an incident happens, we have to plead guilty, and
it is about mitigation in court. We have a very complex system
to operate, and it is our job to do that well—I am not saying
anything other than that. The Environment Agency has changed its
approach to classification of incidents and the number of prosecutions
that they take. If you look in the year covered in that report,
we had 40 incidents during that year. This year is considerably
below that, but trends have been upward and in our case particularly
because they changed the way they categorise incidents on the
Tideway in London.
Q110 Chairman: Is there reason to believe
that although the number of incidents is going down, they are
getting more serious? There was that notorious incident, was there
not, on 3 August, of 600,000 tonnes of raw sewage ending up in
the Thames?
Mr Sexton: On the first point,
Chairman, there is no suggestion at all that the incidents are
getting more serious. There will occasionally be more serious
ones, and that is in the nature of it; but there was no upward
trend in the seriousness of the incidents.
Q111 Chairman: There is no downward trend
either, is there? I see that the Mayor of London has been taking
a close interest in this, and there are reports that up to 20
million tonnes of raw sewage continues to be flushed into the
Thames because the system cannot cope. Is that going to continue
for the foreseeable future?
Mr Sexton: Yes, it will. It is
very, very different to the types of incidents that are normally
the matter for prosecutions and reporting in Spotlight.
The Thames Tideway suffers from over 50 overflows to the tidal
river. That is how the system was designed in Victorian times,
and it is how it still operates today. Those discharges are legally
made, and it is exactly how the system is designed to operate.
Q112 Chairman: Do you think it is right
that it is legal to pump 20 million tonnes of raw sewage into
the Thames?
Mr Sexton: I believe it is absolutely
right that it is legal at this moment in time because the system
is operating as it was designed to do. Prior to privatisation
we raised the issue that the situation with the Tideway was totally
unsatisfactory; that it needed considerable investment to remedy.
We have raised it at each of the price reviews with Ofwat, and
five years ago Ofwat funded a combined study of ourselves, GLA,
Ofwat, Defra and riparian boroughs, looking at what the solution
should be to this. That group has reported and has come up with
a scheme of the order of £2 billion. Investment is needed
to intercept these sewers that discharge. That is a huge investment,
and a decision whether or not to proceed with an investment such
as that is one for ministers. I believe that that situation should
not continue. The investment does need to be made. I repeat that
it would be outrageous for us to be prosecuted in those cases,
when the system is operating as it was designed to do, and when
it is completely legal because they are consented discharges.
Q113 Chairman: To what extent do you
think that climate change may add to your problems, with rising
water levels and wetter weather generally?
Mr Sexton: The increasing intensity
of short duration storms inevitably puts a load on the sewerage
system. There are other factors as well. The urbanisation in London,
with much less green areas for run-off so that the water goes
into the sewers and peaks so that it arrives at the same time,
and the increase in population, are putting increasing load onto
the sewerage system. It needs a lot of investment to make sure
it is upgraded to what I believe is right and proper for the 21st
century.
Q114 Chairman: It sounds to me as though
it is likely to get worse rather than better.
Mr Sexton: The downward trend
is for it to get worse, and will require these very significant
investments to be made to put the situation in a state where it
ought to be for London.
Q115 Chairman: There has been talk of
running a big pipe down the length of the Thames. Is that something
that is under active consideration?
Mr Sexton: That is effectively
the solution to this problem.
Q116 Chairman: Does that not mean that
it just ends up at Southend or somewhere else? On the whole, we
take a pretty poor view of dumping raw sewage in the sea.
Mr Sexton: At the moment, when
the rainfall is excessive, these overflows discharge into the
River Thames. The proposal is to intercept those overflows and
to build a tunnel that more or less follows the route of the Thames.
That tunnel would be huge, several metres across, and provides
storage as well as a route; and then it would be routed through
our treatment works at Beckton and Crossness. When these events
happen the sewage is dilute because we are talking about a huge
amount of rainfall, and that would be treated then at our existing
works at Beckton and Crossness. There is no doubt at all that
it produces a solution to the problem; but because of the £2
billion price-tag on it, it is obviously something that is a matter
for ministers to decide whether that investment is necessary.
Q117 Mr Challen: It sounds as though
there is under capacity or unused capacity at your existing sewage
treatment plant at the place you have just mentioned. Why is that?
Why was it built with that capacity, which could be there now
to accommodate this pipe's contents?
Mr Sexton: Sewage works are upgraded
to cope with increasing volume. The regulatory regime does not
allow you to create a huge amount of excess capacity in case it
is needed, and at each of the five-yearly price reviews we were
putting proposals for increasing the flow to treatment. In the
draft determination published in August, they have allowed for
considerable increase in the capacity of our sewage works discharging
into the Tideway, but the issues causing the pollution events
we had in August are about the network, the pipes and tunnels
that lead to the sewage works. We have to get it there. Those
pipes have a finite capacity, and when they are full they overflow
into the River Thames.
Q118 Mr Challen: Obviously, it is 100
or 150 years since the Victorians built all these tunnels in the
first place. When was this problem first highlighted?
Mr Sexton: I am very aware that
in the late eighties it was highlighted. A temporary solution
was agreed then. I used to put the Thames Water Authority corporate
plan into government in my previous role. It was highlighted there,
and a temporary solution was put forward, rather than tackling
the problem. That temporary solution is still used today, which
is to have bubblers, boats that pump pure oxygen into the river,
to try and reduce the damaging effect of the discharge. That was
deemed to be an appropriate solution, and that is still deemed
to be an appropriate solution.
Q119 Chairman: How many years do you
suspect it will take before we get a proper solution to this problem?
Mr Sexton: Once a decision has
been made to proceed, because of the scale of the problem it is
anticipated it will take four to five years to do the detailed
design and to get planning permissions and to acquire land, because
it is from Richmond right through the centre of London. A tunnel
of that size is estimated to be eight to 10 years to construct.
It is much more complex than the Channel Tunnel, for example.
It is a huge engineering scheme, which is why it is so expensive.
It is not a trivial decision to make whether it should happen,
but it is one that we are supporting.
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