The Environment Agency is failing to protect rivers from pollution washed off industrial estates and car parks by rain. Take action here.
Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee in 2022 said “Diffuse pollution from highways, towns and cities can lead to chronic impacts on the quality of aquatic life in rivers as it accumulates in sediments.”
Stormwater runoff is unregulated, yet is one of the main reasons London’s river have poor water quality. But the Environment Agency isn’t using the Environmental Permitting Regulations to control this contamination. Any water discharge that sees “poisonous, noxious or polluting matter” enter a river should have a permit. This permit could see an oil separator fitted to the drain to clean the water before it left the site. But when we asked the regulator if it checks whether car parks have installed these devices or if they are maintained, they don’t.
We are preparing a formal complaint to the Office of Environmental Protection, seeking a ruling that the Environment Agency is not meeting its statutory duty and should use its regulatory powers to prevent pollution being discharged to rivers from industrial estates and other large paved areas.
Boost our case and put pressure on the Environment Agency by sending our legally binding Information Request. We need to hold the regulator to account for not enforcing the law.
For rivers to stand a chance of being healthy we need to cut the amount of dirty water that flows into them. This is preventable pollution and we need to see greater action.
We want to see compliance with the law. The companies that are making greater efforts should be recognised, and the polluter pays approach applied to those that send their runoff to rivers.