It’s rare to see a week go by without some form of water pollution scandal or other being reported in the news. It just goes to show how very vulnerable businesses are to it. The stories we’ve covered this time around illustrate how tricky it can be to find out what happened, identify the culprit, and get the matter dealt with. Here’s the latest water pollution news.

Manchester’s Bridgewater Canal has the blues

In early January a stretch of the Bridgewater Canal, behind Manchester’s Trafford Centre, turned an odd shade of milky turquoise blue. An investigation has been launched to find out why the canal’s usual orange-brown, a natural colour that comes from the nearby iron ore mine in Worsley, was replaced by the spooky blue.

The Environment Agency, the body investigating the cause, believes the discolouration was caused by pollution, and they’ve promised to monitor the situation to “reduce any environmental impact”. The suspected chemical spill was first reported on the 9th January by the Manchester Evening News. Messenger Newspapers revived the story on 11th January. But a couple of weeks later there’s nothing new to report. We can only assume the authorities are still looking into the matter.

NHS Highland kicks off a multi-agency hospital pollution reduction project

It’s a horrible thought, and it’s something most people don’t know about. The water around hospitals tends to contain all manner of nasties, including unusually high amounts of toxins and drug residues that contaminate drinking water and food, things like antibiotics, antihistamines and pain killers.

These substances get into the water system when patients urinate after taking medicines, something that happens because only a small amount of the drugs people take are actually absorbed by the body. The rest is expelled via sweat and toilet waste. When people flush unwanted medicines down the loo or sink, which they frequently do, the problem is made even worse.

In an effort the turn the tide, Caithness General Hospital decided to try and reduce the impact of pharmaceuticals on the local environment. The resulting multi-agency project led to the hospital being the first hospital in the world – and the only site of any kind in Britain – to be given the coveted Alliance of Water Stewardship (AWS) standard.

It looks like anything from 30% to 90% of all medicines taken by mouth end up in the nation’s waste water system, and in the UK a shameful £300 million or so of dispensed medicines are wasted every year, simply sent down the drain. Given that water is a precious resource, humans quickly die without it, and we can get very ill indeed from drinking contaminated supplies, it’s good news that one British hospital is taking the matter seriously. Now how about the rest?

Thames Water pollution scandal attracts £2m in fines

Thames Water has been fined £2m for “foreseeable and avoidable” pollution after raw sewage escaped and polluted two Oxfordshire streams in summer 2015, killing almost 150 fish. The sewage also made its way into someone’s garden, a serious hazard to health. The judge ruled that the incident was a “high-end, category three harm offence”, and hopefully the stiff fine applied should be big enough to prevent any other water companies being so careless.

The issue came about created thanks to numerous failures at a Thames Water sewage pumping station, which led to sewerage created by two villages pouring into two streams then into the River Evenlode, a tributary of the Thames. The leak persisted for 24 hours and the judge found the company “reckless” as a result.

The court discovered how Thames Water had ignored more than 800 ‘high priority’ alarms in the six weeks preceding the leak, all of which should have been addressed within four hours, and which would have revealed the problem before it became an actual issue. In one incident, an alarm was actually deactivated during a night shift.

The two polluted streams are home to precious wildlife including kingfishers, herons, trout and more. The agency hopes this prosecution will send “a loud and clear message that (we) will not accept poor operation, management and maintenance of sewage pumping stations. Where we have evidence of offending and serious pollution incidents like here, we will take appropriate action to bring polluters to justice.”

The sewerage pumping station in question was left without a standby pump for about 10 months during the year before the pollution incident, something that Thames Water didn’t report to The Environment Agency.

The water company pleaded guilty and has been asked to pay almost £80,000 in court costs as well as the fine.

Are you at risk of causing water pollution?

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