Debt-laden utility giant Thames Water is in a frantic race to secure £1 billion and fend off its collapse, amid reports it might have to be taken over by the taxpayer.
The firm, which serves 15 million people and is Britain’s biggest water supplier, is a staggering £14 billion in debt and is reportedly on the brink of collapse.
So severe is the situation, Government ministers are now considering whether or not to nationalise the business should it fail.
Thames last year suffered its worst leakage rate in five years, with an estimated 630 million litres of water a day escaping from its ageing network of pipes.
And the under-fire utility group has encountered a huge backlash over the amount of sewage being pumped into rivers amid claims leaks have wiped out thousands of fish, with 8,013 spills recorded last year, the equivalent of 22 a day.
The grim statistics, compiled by the website Top of the Poops, saw discharges lasting for 74,693 hours, or more than eight years cumulatively, in 378 locations.
The latest discharge took place last Tuesday at Henley-on-Thames in Oxford, with dead fish being pictured later floating in the river after the release.
Thames has been heavily criticised in recent years for dumping raw sewage. Between 2017 and 2021, the firm was fined £31 million for discharging effluent.
In 2021 it was prosecuted by the Environment Agency for allowing half a million gallons of raw sewage to cascade into a river for 30 hours, in an ecological disaster that wiped out 3,000 fish.
Describing the carnage, Robert Davis, an Environment Agency senior officer who went to the location, said that it was quite horrific. Sewage pollution was bank to bank and there was a foul stench of raw sewage.
He said that when they traced the source they found a waterfall of raw sewage discharging via a pipe into the streams. Amongst the dead fish, Fisheries officers observed hundreds more on the surface, suffering and gasping for oxygen.
Thames has since announced it will be pumping in £1.6 billion into improving its sewage treatment works and networks in an effort to try and halve discharges by 2030.
The firm also proposed controversial efforts to tackle drought in the future, including a ‘recycling’ scheme that would see 100 million litres of treated sewage from the Mogden sewage works being pumped into the River Thames at Teddington, southwest London, every day.
And then they have the audacity to make us have a hosepipe ban whilst they’re dumping sewage into our rivers, and on top of that, they bill us for it as well – there would be riots in other countries, but here in the United Kingdom we just sit back and take it on the chin, like good little serfs that we are.
Our government has failed us and now they expect us to foot the bill for their failure, but while the sheeple walk around with their noses where they shouldn’t be, our government are getting away with it. Time for reform!
No wonder the rich become richer and we the common people nibble from the trough, and everyone’s a winner on the most elite list, apart from the consumer and the taxpayer.
And I wonder how much this company has paid in dividends and bonuses since it was privatised billions, I bet.
All that cash could have been put back into the system, created more capacity, updated the whole network, and stopped sewage going into rivers with no thought for those poor fish or the people of this country because it’s all about profits and not necessities to life.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 