How our wastewater system works
Originally, our wastewater system was built to carry all wastewater from homes and businesses, along with rainwater from roofs, pavements, and roads. As towns and cities have grown, more rainwater now enters the public sewers. During heavy rain, the sewer system can get overwhelmed. To prevent flooding, special pipes called storm overflows release excess water into local rivers and streams. While this water is mostly rainwater, it can also contain chemicals and some sewage.
Regulation and monitoring
The Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales regulate when these overflows can happen through a permit system. If a company breaks the rules, they can face penalties. Since March 2024, all wastewater companies must have monitors on their storm overflows. These monitors tell them when an overflow happens and for how long. The government requires companies to make this information public.
Monitoring has shown that storm overflows are being used more often and for longer than intended. To address this, in England there is now a storm overflow Discharge Reduction Plan. This plan focuses on areas where overflows are causing the most harm to rivers and streams. In Wales, Ministers have established a Better River Water Quality taskforce, which has produced five action plans in place to address harm caused by storm overflows on the environment. However, storm overflows are not the only source of pollution. Rainwater running off roads and farmland also pollutes our waterways.
Our role
We understand that people are worried about Storm Overflows and their impact on local rivers and streams. This concern affects trust in local wastewater companies and the water industry as a whole. People want companies to be open and honest about their performance and to improve if needed. Poor performers should be held accountable.
To help, we are encouraging wastewater companies to share more information about their environmental performance on their websites. This way, companies can explain the issues and how they plan to fix them. It’s also a chance to share good practices and lessons learned.
Making information accessible
We want to ensure the information provided is useful and easy to access. Whether you’re planning a holiday, using local waterways for recreation, or just want to understand how your water company is doing, you should have the information you need.
We believe a centralised Environmental Information Hub would be helpful, so everyone can search for information about different locations, no matter where they live. That’s why CCW is working with Water UK to help steer a project to make this happen. CCW also sits on the Wales Better River Water Quality taskforce, which is working to make environmental information easily accessible to everyone visiting or living in Wales.