Britons needs to be “less squeamish” about consuming reprocessed sewage water, and cease treating the useful resource as a “free good”, the top of the Environment Agency has mentioned.
It comes as water corporations have been accused of dumping sewage into rivers and the ocean over the previous few weeks, triggering warnings about contaminated water.
There have been rising calls to strip water firm bosses of their multimillion-pound bonuses after outrage at how a lot sewage is being pumped into the ocean.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Sir James Bevan, head of the Environment Agency, mentioned that folks within the UK needs to be “less squeamish” in terms of consuming water that has beforehand been blended with sewage, as water corporations plan to recycle water instantly from flushed bogs.
Sir James says such a water is “perfectly safe and healthy, but not something many people fancy”.
He added we must always “change the way they think about water”, and “treat it as a precious resource, not a free good”.
“We need to remember where it comes from: when we turn on the tap, what comes out started in a river, lake, or aquifer,” he wrote.
“The more we take, the more we drain those sources and put stress on nature and wildlife.
“If we’re going to get there, we’re all going to must assume in a different way. Some of those measures can be unpopular, so future governments might want to present political will.”
Sir James’s feedback come as a Channel 4 News investigation discovered greater than 870 water pipes within the UK might be dumping sewage with out permits.
More than 200 of these have been confirmed to be in use by water corporations, the broadcaster mentioned.
The Environment Agency instructed the programme: “Water companies have rightly been condemned for allowing far too many sewage spills, and we are holding the industry to account on an unprecedented scale.”
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs added: “We are the first government to take action to tackle sewage overflows. We have been clear that water companies’ reliance on overflows is unacceptable, and they must significantly reduce how much sewage they discharge as a priority.
“This is on high of bold motion we’ve already taken, together with setting targets to enhance water high quality which can act as a robust device to ship cleaner water, pushing all water corporations to go additional and quicker to repair overflows.”
Source: information.sky.com”