A new three-part factual drama, Dirty Business, highlights the murky world of the English water industry. This Channel 4 docudrama follows the lives of two concerned citizens from Oxfordshire in south-east England: a retired police detective called Ash Smith and a retired university professor called Peter Hammond, who is an expert in deciphering patterns in big data sets. Together, they have been investigating sewage discharges into their local river for more than a decade.
The series spotlights their struggles to get information from their water company about releases of untreated sewage, and for the Environment Agency (EA) to take their concerns about pollution seriously. Interwoven with their accounts are tragic stories of several families whose lives have been turned upside down through exposure to contaminated water.
During a beach holiday in Devon in 1999, for example, eight-year-old Heather Preen died after contracting a deadly strain of E. coli. The cause of the outbreak was not identified and a verdict of misadventure was returned by a jury. However, several others who visited the beach that day had also contracted that specific strain of E. coli, making causes such as food poisoning unlikely. Elsewhere in England, the series shows rivers depleted of life and discoloured with sewage.
Water bills are increasing by as much as 47% to improve the failing infrastructure. Customers are angry that some of their money is servicing the debts of the water industry. Meanwhile, reports point to large profits for some water firms.
Dirty Business captures the sense of anger and frustration felt by many people.
As a water pollution scientist with more than 25 years’ experience, I worry about the lack of corporate and political accountability across this sector. That includes financial accountability, accountability for human health, nature and water security.
England’s water industry has been privatised since 1989. As such, water company boards exist to make money for their shareholders.
Many water companies have been fined millions of pounds for polluting discharges, failure to maintain infrastructure and withholding evidence from investigative authorities. However, critics have argued that these fines have been built into the business model, as dividends are not related to environmental performance. The water industry is also now lobbying government against further regulation and fines.
Rob Baker Ashton / Channel 4
Between 2019 and 2024, water companies in England discharged sewage for a total of 16.3 million hours. This is equivalent to sewage being constantly released from one pipe for more than 1,850 years.
Profit drives pollution
Since privatisation began, water companies in England have paid out an estimated £76 billion in dividends to shareholders while accruing approximately £56 billion in debts. Dirty Business highlights not only what went wrong with the water industry, but the tactics used to deny, deflect and distract from its poor environmental performance.
I have studied the disinformation and misinformation by water companies with Hammond, a professor in computational biology. Our peer-reviewed article in the journal Nature Water highlights how companies maintain their profits by controlling the narrative and influencing the regulatory process.
Rob Baker Ashton / Channel 4
Our study involved analysing water company communications – including company websites, social media, evidence given to parliamentary committees and public reports. We compared their strategies with a list of 28 tactics commonly used by tobacco, alcohol, fossil fuels and chemical industries to distract from serious environmental and human health issues.
We found that the English water companies and their sponsored lobbyists appeared to be using at least 22 of those tactics to deny, deflect or distort the facts. This results in the delay of civil, regulatory and political scrutiny.
Investigations ongoing
Since 2021, the EA in England has been conducting its largest ever criminal investigation into the water industry – which is still ongoing after five years. The House of Lords has been investigating the industry regulator, Ofwat. There are several other ongoing judicial reviews and civil court cases against several water companies.
A new government watchdog, the Office of Environmental Protection (OEP), has been conducting investigations into the financial and environmental regulators of the water industry. It concluded that “there have been failures to comply with environmental law by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the EA and Ofwat relating to the regulation of network CSOs [combined sewer overflows]”.
CSOs are overflow pipes which discharge untreated sewage into rivers and coasts at times of increased rainfall. These are permitted under certain conditions by the Environment Agency, such as exceptional rainfall, to prevent sewage backing up our drains.
But many swimmers, surfers and other concerned citizens have noticed these CSOs discharging sewage even on days when there was little or no rainfall.
An independent water commission set up by the current government has recommended “a complete overhaul of England and Wales’ water sector” and suggested merging Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and parts of the EA to create one new regulating body. Frustratingly for many, this commission was not given the scope to look into the pros and cons of bringing water back into public ownership.
The UK government halved the EA’s environmental protection budget from £170 million in 2009-10 (following the banking crisis) to £76 million in 2019-22.
Since 2009, the water industry has been left to police its own pollution incidences through a process known as “operator self monitoring” – whereby water companies are responsible for carrying out their own environmental monitoring. Evidenced by whistleblowers, the documentary portrays the shock and frustration within the EA to the rolling back of regulation by senior management.
Dirty Business illustrates how corporate greed and the fundamental lack of governance and regulatory oversight across the nation’s water industry allowed this sewage crisis to happen – at the cost of environmental and human health, and our future water security.
