Water companies will be fined if they do not reduce their sewage discharges or fail to monitor them, Ofwat has announced.their legal spillsWhere monitors are not working, Ofwat will work on the basis that spills from the site are twice as bad as the current average and fine them accordingly. That, it says, will motivate water companies to ensure their monitors are working.
The companies are now legally obliged to fit monitors to their overflows, but many of these have been found to be faulty or broken. Aileen Armstrong, a senior director at Ofwat, said: “Companies need to reduce the use of storm overflows. We want to introduce measures to hold them to account for this and to ensure companies are effectively monitoring their use of storm overflows. We will continue to use all the powers we have to drive companies to get to grips with this issue.”