In a debate in Parliament today local MP for Basingstoke Maria Miller has welcomed the new measures in the Environment Act 2021 which will do more to clean up our rivers and seas by making it a statutory duty to reduce and then eliminate storm water overflow from sewage works in England; for the Environment Agency to publish data on storm overflow events on an annual basis; and a new duty on water companies to monitor the water quality upstream and downstream of storm overflows and sewage works.
Maria said after the debate, “Our River the Loddon is a rare, north flowing, salmonoid chalk stream of which there are only 200 in the whole world. Over the past decade I have worked with the Environment Agency and Thames Water to make sure a cleaner Loddon is a priority in Basingstoke despite some of the highest levels of house building in the country. This new Environment Act will mean we can now go even further with a statutory duty to reduce and then plan to stop any storm water overflow into the river entirely.
“Basingstoke sewage works already operates to some of the strictest rules in the country when it comes to the quality of the treated water discharged into the river but there is more to do on untreated storm water discharges into the Loddon which occurred 40 times in the first 4 months of 2020.
“At the moment if storm water was not discharged into the river it would flood homes and businesses because there isn’t sufficient capacity in the sewage system to store that volume of water. That is why I am calling on the Government to bring into force Schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 which removes house builders automatic right to connect rainwater drainage to combined sewers which puts massive volumes of rain water into the sewage system during periods of heavy rain.
“There are so many complex pressures on our water ways and Basingstoke is no different. The quality of our river water has to be central to the decisions we make on any future development, including the new Local Plan when it is revised next year. The Loddon is a stream when it passes by the Basingstoke sewage works and this has to be taken into account as these new plans to reduce storm overflow events are finalised. ”
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-11-15/debates/21111537000002…