Flushable wipes, 'stench and filth' and 'human sewage': Fury over river pollution in Greater Manchester borough

Jun 22, 2023

'The stench and filth deposited is sickening'

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Trafford councillors furious over raw discharges into the River Mersey are calling on the government to take action and ensure that polluters "pay."

A resolution passed at the authority’s full council meeting has urged Parliament to ensure that the water companies ‘operate in the interests of the public, not shareholders’.

They also want ‘meaningful provision for the monitoring of water quality, a meaningful strategy published with targets for the reduction of sewage discharges and financial penalties for breaches'.

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The River Mersey flows through the Longford ward of councillor Sarah Haughey. She told the meeting: “In Stretford and Urmston last year there were 24 sites polluted, 1,095 sewage dumps over a period of time amounting to 8.62 months.”

She said that since water was privatised in 1991 water companies ‘have paid a staggering £50bn in dividends to their shareholders’.

“This country is awash with Tory government-sanctioned filthy raw sewage,” said Coun Haughey.

"I love these green lungs and use them daily, but the stench and filth deposited is sickening. And the smoking gun is flushable wipes which decorate my ward after every such discharge."

Proposing the motion Coun Barry Winstanley said: “Our quality of life is being treated with utter contempt. It’s being dumped on with raw human sewage on an industrial scale. Our residents are rightly angry.”

He blamed a ‘lack of governance from Westminster and the slashing of Environment Agency resources'.

“Since 2010, environmental protection funding has dropped by 80 per cent and enforcement by 40pc. Unsurprisingly, prosecutions fell from almost 800 in 2007/8 and just 17 in 2021,” he said.

Members of the Green Party and Labour supported the motion, but the Conservative group, led by Coun Nathan Evans abstained.

Coun Evans said: “Any suggestion that any MP or council has voted to legalise or allow more sewage into our rivers is simply not true.”

He went on: “This is the first government to take steps to address storm overflow.

“In August 2022, the storm overflow discharge reduction plan was launched, backed by £56bn of capital investment, which is the largest infrastructure programme by the water companies.

"This includes massively increasing monitoring of the frequency and duration of discharges from approximately seven per cent in 2010 when Labour left office to 90 pc now with 100pc by the end of the year.”