Taskforce to be launched to tackle raw sewage dumping in Shropshire's waterways

A nationwide uproar was caused late last year as Conservative MPs were accused of giving the go-ahead to water companies to dump raw sewage in rivers.

The issue has prompted several protests in our county, and earlier this year Shropshire Council pledged to hold water companies Severn Trent and Welsh Water to account over sewage dumping.

Now, the authority's Place Overview Committee has unanimously voted in favour of carrying out a "task and finish group". The group wants to lobby MPs, water companies, the Environment Agency, Defra, fisheries representatives and several others to look at ways the rivers can be cleaned up.

Its objectives will be to better understand the reasons for sewage discharges and farm-related discharges, to understand the nature of the infrastructure improvements that would be necessary, to ask water companies to provide timescales for mitigating the effects of sewage and other pollutants being discharged into our rivers, and to discuss the funding of capital schemes and possible access to additional funding.

The group also wants to better understand the monitoring of these discharges, ensuring that there is comprehensive coverage across Shropshire and that the reporting of any results is easily available, open and transparent. Another objective will be to identify and prioritise those rivers in Shropshire that would benefit from "Bathing Water" status and then produce a plan on how to achieve and maintain that status.

It will also aim, through the planning process, to hold developers and the water companies to account so as to provide and fund adequate sewerage provision for the large increase in housing proposed in the draft Shropshire Plan.

Councillor Kate Halliday, who officers acknowledged had been driving this forward, told the committee: "I think most of us are aware now that there is sewage discharge into our rivers. I haven't come across anybody who is happy about that. When I put forward this motion to council I got all sorts of emails from all sorts of groups.

"Some local groups who've been protesting or raising awareness on this, but also I got emails from anglers, wild swimmers - all sorts of people. I think it's something the residents in Shropshire would like to see improve.

"As a council we've got some additional influence that we can play. I think quite often this issue focuses on water companies, and they most certainly should be focused on. But there are also other issues around planning and drainage. There's lots of issues from farms so I think there are a wide group of people as a council we could call into this.

"The most recent Environment Act suggested we should be cleaning up our rivers and certainly reducing the sewage flowing into our rivers. It mandates water companies to do that.

"But it doesn't give any sort of timetable, so I think as a council we can play quite a role in this.

"I'm hoping the committee will support the idea of having a task and finish group to look at this in more detail. I think we could have quite an impact on improving and cleaning up our rivers across Shropshire."