The Environment Agency claims:
Recent media reports have raised important concerns about our rivers and waterways, which we are working hard to protect and improve.— Environment Agency (@EnvAgency) August 17, 2020
Read more in today's blog 👇https://t.co/4bmQwYGReT
Meanwhile, Sir James Bevan, Head of the Environment Agency, gave a different message entirely:
Environment Agency chief supports plan to weaken river pollution rules https://t.co/UFI6smJmQS— The Guardian (@guardian) August 19, 2020
The head of the Environment Agency has endorsed a proposal to weaken laws on cleanliness of polluted rivers, lakes and coastlines after Brexit.
Bevan flagged the idea of amending the EU’s water framework directive (WFD) to an audience of business leaders. England has consistently failed to bring its rivers up to the standard required under the directive, which puts waterways through four stringent tests designed to assess their health. Rivers have to be assessed on all four tests in order to be graded as “good” – known as the one-out-all-out rule. Just 14% of English rivers have been assessed under the directive as good...
But Bevan said in his speech that he wanted England to reform the directive to end the one-out-all-out rule and allow rivers to be judged on one criterion rather than all four. If that changed, the number of rivers judged in a good state would rise dramatically overnight.
The Guardian revealed last month that water companies released 1.5m hours of raw sewage via storm outflows into rivers in 2019, in 204,000 discharges all of which are permitted by Bevan’s agency. Critics say the agency is giving water companies a licence to pollute, and exploiting the rules that say sewage can only be released in exceptional circumstances, like extreme rainfall.
"The worst kind of clumsy pretence aimed at trying to cover up decades worth of the EA’s own failure and incompetence". Feargal Sharkey.https://t.co/PqMG0PtbC9— Feargal Sharkey (@Feargal_Sharkey) August 19, 2020
