The Times newspaper launched a strong attack on the water sector on Saturday with its front page entirely taken up with a warning that no river in England is safe for bathing, together with a further two pages of detailed analysis and comment.

The extensive coverage was accompanied by a separate leading editorial article headlined “The Environment Agency needs to get tougher with water companies whose woeful record on pollution means no English river can be certified safe for swimming.”

The newspaper said that its own investigation of 55 million water quality tests by the Environment Agency over an 18 year period had revealed that rivers are not being tested enough by the Environment Agency to be considered safe for swimming, with 86% falling short of standards set under the EU Water Framework Directive.

The leader article says that “much of the blame for this miserable record lies with the water companies” and that the broader problem is that the Agency is “simply failing to do its job.” The Times says the evidence suggests that the regulator “has taken its eye off the ball” and that the water companies “have been allowed to mark their own homework” by carrying out some of the tests themselves.

According to the article, the number of water quality tests taken by the Environment for all pollutants, including toxic heavy metals, bacteria, pesticides and other chemicals, has fallen from nearly 5 million in 2000 to 1.3 million in 2018.

The newspaper warns:

“Given levels of testing, not a single river in England is rated as safe to swim in and there is mounting evidence that crude sewage is regularly pumped into rivers across the country because outdated treatment facilities cannot cope.”

The Times said it had itself “also found evidence of raw sewage being dumped in rivers” via 16,000 emergency outflow sites in England where the water companies are legally allowed to spill untreated sewage into rivers in exceptional storm conditions.

The article refers to the record £127 million fine imposed by Ofwat last month on Southern Water for “deliberate misreporting”of data and “dumping an unknown amount of sewage into rivers, streams and on beaches over seven years.”

“Toothless watchdog lets water giants set own pollution fines”.

The newspaper is highly critical of the Environment Agency’s “enforcement undertakings” procedure which allow the water companies to repair environmental damage, accept liability and make a charitable contribution rather face a prosecution.

Its inside double page headline says:

“Toothless watchdog lets water giants set own pollution fines”.

The Times quotes Kerry McCarthy MP and a member of two House of Commons select Committees on the Environment as saying the water companies were “treating fines as the cost of doing business, rather than seeing them as a serious deterrent.

According to the newspaper, where the utilities have been prosecuted, the fines were “pitifully small” – the water companies had a net income of £9.3 billion between 2014 and last year, while only £35 million in fines were imposed over the same period.

“Such lax treatment is virtually an invitation to pollute”, The Times concludes.

However, despite Labour’s proposal to renationalise the companies by spending £90 billion to bring them back into public ownership, the newspaper says this is “no solution”.

Instead The Times is calling for the Environment Agency to be overhauled, concluding:

It needs to take pollution far more seriously, set the water companies more demanding targets and impose far tougher penalties when they fail to meet them.”

“If that requires giving the EA a bigger budget than the long-suffering taxpayer can afford, the water companies can foot the bill.”