Your Water Your Say – How to Get Involved

‘Your Water, Your Say’ meetings are a huge opportunity for you to question your water companies about their upcoming plans on investment, the environment, bills and sewage.

Coming up during November, across England and Wales, these online meetings provide the perfect platform for you to publicly challenge your water company’s five year plan. SAS HQ will be attending each meeting to put the pressure on, and ask those all important questions on sewage pollution and the environment. The more of us there, the better. You know best what’s happening in your area, and to your community, and we’d be stoked if you would join us and challenge your water company on local issues. Let’s make the most of this.

The dates and times for your local meeting are here.

Interested but not sure what to ask? We’ve got your back. Here are a few suggested questions you might want to ask at these meetings. We’d encourage you to edit them with specifics about your local area.

Stop Breaking the Law:

Water companies are only legally allowed to use overflows to discharge untreated sewage in exceptional circumstances. We know, however, that many companies are breaking this law and using these overflows even in dry weather. This must stop.

1. When will you stop breaking the law?
2. How do you decide what is classed as exceptional circumstances, because your routine pollution isn’t exceptional?

Stop pollution for Profit:

We all know that water companies have been polluting for profit. Last year water companies paid out £965 million to shareholders and £16.5 million to CEOs whilst polluting on average 800 times a day. We want to know when water companies will put their customers and the environment ahead of filling the pockets of shareholders and execs.

1. Do you consider the impact on human health, the environment, or the local economy when you are deciding whether to pay out massive bonuses to shareholders?
2. How will you make sure that money isn’t siphoned off to shareholders but instead reinvested into delivering environmental improvements?

Nature Based Solutions:

Instead of constructing giant concrete storage tanks, we want water companies to start working with nature to fix sewage pollution. Creating and restoring wetlands, tree planting and even making our rivers more bendy, can all slow the flow of water into our the sewage system, stopping the overuse of overflows. All whilst also helping to increase biodiversity, trap carbon and reduce flood risk.

1. How much have you invested in nature based solutions? What percentage of investment is that?
2. How do you assess the benefits nature based solutions can provide to the community and environment?

Ambitious targets:

We want to know how ambitious your water company is trying to be. We know the government have set legal targets, but these are not a cap on ambition, they’re the bare minimum.

1. When will you end untreated discharges affecting bathing waters and places were people use the water?
2. When will you end untreated discharges affecting protected nature sites?

Transparency:

The monitoring of sewage pollution has hugely improved in the last couple of years thanks to the tireless campaigning of our supporters. But we still don’t have monitoring all around the country. And the info we do have is complicated and is largely not available in real time.

1. When will 100% of all sewage discharges be monitored, including emergency overflow pipes and treated sewage, so we know the full scale impact?
2. When will you start monitoring the impact of your overflows on our rivers and sea?

We’ll see you there. 

The dates and times for your local meeting are here.

Water UK is the trade association for the water industry and represents the industry in discussions with the government.