New campaign seeks to clean up Lewes waterways

Plaques were placed in spoof ceremonies at Lewes, Barcombe Mills, Seaford Splash Point and outside Lewes MP Maria Caulfield’s office in Newhaven. This was part of the first national day of action of a new campaign called Dirty Water, seeking to “highlight the government’s continued failure to tighten environmental regulations and stop profit-grabbing by water companies.”

Helen Frederick, an activist with Friends of Seaford Bay, a group formed by concerned sea and river swimmers and nature lovers says: “We’ve watched in horror as our rivers and seas have become open sewers since October 2021, when the government, including our own MP Maria Caulfield, voted down a proposal to stop water companies pumping waste directly into our rivers and seas.”

Maria Caulfield voted for Amendment 45 to the Environment Bill in October 2021, which enshrined in law a duty for water companies to secure progressive reduction in the adverse impacts of discharges from storm overflows. Removed from the amendment was the responsibility of the sewerage system as a whole: "Duty on sewerage undertakers to take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows. A sewerage undertaker must demonstrate improvements in the sewerage systems and progressive reductions in the harm caused by untreated sewage discharges”, was removed.

Helen added: “The government justified this by claiming that the proposal was too expensive, and put in much softer measures which don’t hold the water companies to account.”

Pollution from agriculture, human sewage, roads, and single-used plastics means that only 14 per cent of the UK’s rivers achieve “good” ecological status.

Alongside this campaign, Lewes Liberal Democrats have started a petition to stop sewage dumping in waterways.

James MacCleary, leader of Lewes District Council and Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for Lewes, said: "At the end of January, Conservative MPs voted to give water companies a full fifteen years to clean up their act. In the meantime, top water company Executives paid themselves over £30 million in bonuses over the last two years. In effect, the Conservatives have given Southern Water a green light to keep pouring raw sewage into our rivers and coastline while continuing to make huge profits from hard pressed customers struggling to make ends meet.”

Conservatives voted to approve regulations laid before Parliament which gives the water companies fifteen years to get the phosphorus in their water down to a safe level.

Emily O’Brien, Green Party Councillor & Prospective Parliamentary Candidate said “The latest protest at the weekend and the launch of this new campaign shows the strength of feeling about the unacceptable levels of untreated waste water being discharged into our rivers and sees. The Green Party is committed to action on water quality. Locally we made Lewes District Council the first in the UK to link sewage discharge with new development. Nationally we are the only party calling for failing water companies like Southern Water to be taken into public ownership. Enough is enough.”

Maria Caulfield said that she voted to "bring in legally binding timelines for these systems to be replaced so that it's not happening in the future" and urged protesters to "work with me because together we can get much more movement on this".

Caulfield has been approached for further comment.

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