Cooking Keramas.

Southern Water Slammed with Record £90 Million Fine for Sewage Pollution

Southern Water have been fined a record £90 million million for illegally dumping raw sewage into the sea across the south coast.

Attempts were also made to prevent EA staff from entering treatment facilities in a blatant move to hide illegal activities.

Treatment works were being deliberately run at less than half their capacity with treatment tanks kept full allowing them to turn septic, releasing a highly toxic soup of sewage and rain water straight into the sea.

In one wastewater treatment facility, sheets of boards had even been put into the system to stop sewage water entering into the treatment plant and instead diverted to a storm tank and then dumped straight into the environment.

We heard how these discharges were highly likely to have been the reason for contaminated shellfish having been discovered along the south coast which risked causing norovirus to consumers – this is a virus than can be fatal.

The evidence gathered during the investigation showed that this was not the work of a few rogue employees but points towards an institutionalised culture of deceit with instructions and co-ordination coming from the very top of the Southern Water chain of command, including senior lawyers.

And all the while Southern Water customers have been paying escalating bills as the company amassed eye watering sums of profits. Over £200m in profits were made by the company in each of the last 3 years. And, it gets worse! Profits are simply hidden offshore. Southern Water’s Jersey based owners Greensands Holdings, controlled from the Caymans, only payed £100,000 corporation tax on £103m profits. Yes, our jaws dropped even further at that too!

Hugo Tagholm, CEO of Surfers Against Sewage says:

It’s absolutely scandalous that Southern Water dumped raw sewage in the sea for so long, hiding their tracks as they went so they could increase their profits. This shocking, criminal capitalism is one of the worst cases of companies wilfully putting profits before the health of people or planet.

Worse still is that water companies, including Southern Water, seem to continue dumping raw sewage into fragile, precious and finite blue habitats, with over 400,000 separate raw sewage pollution events pinned to their collective reputation in 2020 alone. All whilst their CEOs walk away with huge pay packets and dividends.

They are simply not doing a good enough job. The water industry needs to clean up its act and be held to account.

This isn’t the first time that Southern Water have been caught out. In 2019, it was ordered to pay a penalty of £126m back to customers by the price regulator Ofwat for deliberately misreporting its performance, serious failures at sewage treatment sites, and for failing to invest in equipment resulting in discharges of waste water into the environment. And last year we reporting in our Water Quality Report how Southern Water had failed to provide sewage discharge notifications through the Safer Seas & Rivers Service, putting 1,000’s of people at risk of surfing, swimming, kayaking and playing in potentially unsafe waters.

And this won’t be the end of this story. Investigations are still underway for instances occurring after 2015. This week’s case highlights the extent to which corporate greed continues to take precedent over human and environmental health. Water companies simply can’t be allowed to get away with this any longer. It’s time to End Sewage Pollution for good.

What’s New

What’s New, a video featuring Woody and Huck New filmed from the start of 2021 and throughout local restrictions. I’m happy to finally get the footage out for everyone else to see.

Video Rob Blackett

Additional surfers –
Seb Smart
Isaac Marshall
Toby Pearce
George Carpenter

Thanks to Hugh at BOS Surfboards and O’Neill and Volcom for supporting the guys.

Fioravanti Replaces Smith

The International Surfing Association(ISA) today confirms that Italy’s Leonardo Fioravanti will replace South Africa’s Jordy Smith when Surfing makes its Olympic debut in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

The ISA received official notice from Surfing South Africa that Smith will be unable to participate in Tokyo 2020 due to injury.

As per the Tokyo 2020 Alternates list published by the ISA, Fioravanti is the next eligible surfer to replace Smith via the qualification event from which Smith qualified: the 2019 WSL Championship Tour (CT).

The Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) has accepted the qualification slot for Fioravanti, finalizing the process.

Fioravanti placed 31st on the 2019 WSL CT and recently represented his country at the 2021 Surf City El Salvador ISA World Surfing Games where he earned an equal 19th place.

The updated list of qualified Olympic surfers can be found here.

The window for the Olympic Surfing competition will run from July 25 – August 1, with the competition being held in the Chiba prefecture of Japan at Tsurigasaki Beach.

Learn more at isasurf.org.