5 hours ago
5
Since the 1989 privatisation of water in England and Wales we have treated water companies as cash machines, our rivers as sewers and our beaches as middens (Dirty water, death and decline: the inside story of a privatisation scandal, 28 February). Water is a monopoly on an essential resource and it once generated all the income necessary to maintain and update the system. Instead, for more than three decades, the profits from our rising bills have gone into the pockets of venture capitalists.
This is one of the biggest robberies perpetrated on an unsuspecting population in recent times. We have lost safe access to the rivers and coastal waters for swimming and other recreation. We are losing the abundant wildlife that used to call those waters home.
The circumstances around the “misadventure” of eight‑year-old Heather Preen’s death, so sensitively dramatised in Channel 4’s Dirty Business, should never have happened. That it did is an indictment of successive governments and their agencies who thought regulation could be left to the companies.
Removing the profit motive from water is the only answer. Whatever the cost, we owe it to the Heathers of the future – our children and grandchildren – to safeguard their wellbeing.
Georgina Ferry
Oxford
Your excellent articles covering the television series Dirty Business made for disturbing reading and viewing. In Victorian London, human waste was channelled straight into the Thames. This untreated waste gave rise to cholera, which in 1853-54 killed more than 10,700 people. The polluted waters of the Thames led to the Great Stink and waterborne diseases, particularly cholera and typhoid fever, killed huge numbers; in 1858 parliament sanctioned the money for a sewage system to be implemented.
We have gone back in time. Will it take a cholera epidemic before the abhorrent state of our water industry is dealt with?
Lyn Howard
Tavistock, Devon
It’s hard to disagree with Simon Jenkins’s article about trial by media and the blurring of the lines between fact and fiction (Dirty Business, The Lady, Mandelson’s arrest – are they truth, ‘faction’ or just more drama?, theguardian.com, 27 February). However, as the Post Office scandal demonstrates so well, it wasn’t until the drama Mr Bates v The Post Office was aired that the authorities pulled their finger out and took decisive action on the matter. If it appears that the only way for government or regulators to be pushed into action is via the popular media, then there will be incentive for more of these fictional dramas. Therefore another lesson to be taken from this issue is for government and regulators to do their job properly and in a timely manner rather than wait for the latest docudrama to hit our screens.
Tony Chanter
London
I am a citizen scientist taking water samples from a tributary of the Wye twice a week as part of a long-term project (Friends of the Upper Wye) with Cardiff University. Last week there were three large tankers pumping digestate on to fields adjoining the river, a mile from my house. There was a strong smell like rotting vegetation. It rained heavily so the material was likely to be washed into the river, increasing the level of pollution. Please don’t dilute the message, Simon Jenkins. What we are hearing from Dirty Business is only part of an appalling story of neglect.
Elizabeth Hughes
Llowes, Powys
