Cumbrian village suffered 321 sewage spills in past year
A water company has been pumping sewage into a historic Lake District village during dry weather in breach of its permit, the Environment Agency (EA) has said.
Cartmel, at the southern edge of the Lake District National Park in Cumbria, is renowned for its 12th-century priory and L’Enclume, the only three-star Michelin restaurant in the north of England.
However for 20 years residents have complained of foul-smelling water in the village’s River Eea, and of finding dead fish.
On Wednesday, the EA said its investigators had found that United Utilities had been spilling sewage from the local Cark pumping station into the river, even during periods of dry weather.
Water companies are allowed to spill sewage only under exceptional circumstances, when it is raining so heavily that the system cannot cope with the amount of water and effluent.
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The EA’s revelation, which is thought to be the first time that the regulator has publicly highlighted dry-weather spills, was raised in a letter to Tim Farron, the local MP, after a suspected sewage incident on Valentine’s Day.
Jim Ratcliffe, the EA’s manager for Cumbria and Lancashire, said that the impact on the environment during the spillage “had the potential to be significant”.
“We have completed a permit compliance assessment of the pumping station using our nearby rain gauge, the photographs you and your constituents sent to us, as well as information our officers collected at the site,” Ratcliffe said. “The assessment found that the pumping station was spilling in dry weather in breach of its permit.”
Feargal Sharkey, the clean rivers campaigner and former singer with the Undertones, called on the agency to spell out how it intended to deal with the situation.
“The Environment Agency demonstrates yet again that they are incapable of regulating the water industry,” he wrote in a tweet. An EA spokeswoman said that the agency had issued a warning to United Utilities.
Data compiled by the Rivers Trust found that the pumping station at Cark spilled 321 times for a total of 4421 hours last year.
Locals say that sewage backs up into the village, damaging the health and wellbeing of residents and wildlife.
The spills were said to be worse on race days at the village’s national hunt racecourse.
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Linda Youd, a member of Cark River Group, said: “It is horrendous, especially on Cartmel race days with sewage backing up in Cartmel and Allithwaite. You can’t go out of your house with the smell.
“We want to see something happening. It is no good fining the water companies. It is nothing to them.
“Instead of paying millions of pounds to the chief executive officers and dividends to the shareholders, they should be investing in the infrastructure.
“They should do what they are paid to do: give us decent water systems that don’t endanger our health and the wildlife.”
Farron called for the government to introduce tougher penalties against the water companies, and to tax their unearned profits and invest them back into improving the country’s water infrastructure.
A United Utilities spokesman said: “We are continuing to work with the Environment Agency to deliver on an action plan to tackle groundwater infiltration issues at Cartmel-in-Cark pumping station.
“A number of projects are already under way at the pumping station and on the sewer network in the area, and this work will continue as we work through the action plan. This comes as we have ambitious plans to deliver improvements to the sewer network right across Cumbria through one of the biggest environmental programmes in the country.”
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An EA spokeswoman said: “We are clear that polluting our rivers is unacceptable. In this instance, United Utilities caused the pollution on the River Eea and breached their environmental permit. Our teams thoroughly investigated the incident and will continue to work with the water company to drive further improvements.
“The EA is holding the industry to account on a scale never seen before. We have significantly driven up monitoring and transparency from water companies in recent years, which includes an increased level of scrutiny at this site. We will investigate all incidents at the site and will consider what enforcement action is appropriate for each one.”
The Times is demanding faster action to improve the country’s waterways. Find out more about theClean It Up campaign.
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