Households should not have to pick up the bill for water companies’ failings

SIR – It is refreshing to learn that water companies are finally acknowledging their role in polluting our rivers and seas.

However, it is appalling that they can only begin rectifying the problem by increasing costs for households.

Shouldn’t this bill be covered – at least in part – by the shareholders of these companies, by waiving their entitlement to dividends until the issue is resolved? It is all too easy for highly paid managers to pass on costs to customers.

Having taken responsibility for causing the problem, the water companies and their shareholders need to accept responsibility for putting things right.

Roger A Lounds
Christchurch, Dorset

SIR – Since they were privatised in 1989, water companies have been charged with responsibility for significantly reducing the incidence of sewage discharges.

While they have spectacularly failed to achieve this, they have, over those 34 years, increased prices to fund such improvements and continued to make profits, and pay dividends and bonuses. How can they reasonably justify a further increase in prices to achieve objectives that we, the consumers, have already paid for?

Andrew J Smith
West Malling, Kent

SIR – As an engineering student in the 1950s I was told how waste water was dealt with at the treatment plant. I learnt that, under deluge conditions, effluent could bypass the plant and be discharged directly into the sea. I remember being appalled that we did not have sufficient capacity to treat this effluent.

The population then was 50 million. It is now 68 million and rising. As far as I can see, nothing or very little has been done to rectify this situation. As a result, the water companies are discharging effluent, not only into the sea, but also into water courses and streams even when deluge conditions do not exist.

Their apologies, and plans to increase capacity, come under the heading: “Too little, too late”.

Tony Dunstan
Ashford, Kent

SIR – I hate to correct the publicity departments of Britain’s water companies – but when they refer to “spills”, what they really mean is “releases”.

Phil Higginbotham
Dronfield, Derbyshire