Where Is The Political Leadership As Kent Drowns In A Tide Of Stinking Sewage?

Last October Maidstone's hapless MPs Helen Grant and Helen Whately voted down an amendment to the Environment Bill that would have stopped the dumping of sewage into rivers and coastal waters. Many of the Parliamentary supporters of continued sewage dumping by the water companies cited cost as their justification for putting profit before the health of our environment.

This financial excuse has now been blown out of the sewage-filled water by new data from River Action UK showing how the 22 water company bosses paid themselves £24.8 million in 2021/22. Average water company executive salaries and bonuses rose by 21% between 2020/21 and 2021/22. 

The monopolised private water company business-model is clearly not designed to further the national interest, but rather to enrich their shareholders who laughed all the way to the bank with dividends of £72 billion between 1991 and 2019 (source: Financial Times). Meanwhile, not a single new reservoir has been built in thirty years and drinking water leakage rates stand at 20% (the equivalent figure in Germany is just 5%).

Local Conservative-run councils are also to blame for the stinking tide of filth blighting Kent's beaches, rivers and even local roads and footways. Lack of investment in Kent Highways drainage infrastructure means that clean rainwater runs straight into sewers increasing flow rates by some 30 times, causing them to overload and discharge sewage into the environment. 

Local planners are equally part of the problem by prioritising delivery of new housing over critical infrastructures and allowing developers to connect into already overloaded sewerage networks. 

Enlightened forward-thinking local highways drainage and planning policies are urgently needed if Kent's watercourses and beaches are to be saved from the deluge of raw sewage and resultant toxic algal blooms - which will only increase as climate change bites and the Conservative Government's 'build build build' dogma prevails. Sadly, Maidstone Council's draft Local Plan is pathetically weak on environmental protection. 

Leader of MBC Liberal Democrat Group Cllr. Clive English states: "The stench of sewage has become the norm in many parts of the County Town, while the quality of the town centre stretch of the River Len has declined disastrously in recent years." He continues: "All those organisations and agencies with influence over water policy must be brought together to deliver the investment and action that is so desperately needed"