Agenda item

·         Update on why the July 2021 incident was considered not to require a Compliance Assessment Report.

·         Update on what new powers a review of the permit would bring to the EA.

·         Explanation of what the trend of “dry weather flow”, by year, is over the past 5 years.

Lucy Bee and Daniel Ophof provided the following update on behalf of the Environment Agency.

The Environment Agency was still investigating the Little Marlow Sewage Treatment Works incident so they were currently unable to report on that but would update the Committee once the investigation had been finalised. Lucy Bee reported that they had a programme of updating permits for sewage treatment works. The permit for Little Marlow had not been issued yet and some of the permit conditions would be more stringent but it was complicated around compensation flow issues. A timeframe could not be put on when the investigation would be finalised as it depended on what evidence was found.

On top of the local investigation there was a national investigation which was started earlier in the year which was looking at water companies across England and it wasn’t clear yet whether Little Marlow would be included in that national investigation. This was initiated due to public interest in storm overflows.

A question was asked about where residents could report any concerns and also how they would be notified if an event occurred. There was a 24/7 hotline for the reporting of any incidents which could be provided to the Committee including an enquiry email address. There was no methodology to inform residents when there were incidents apart from serious events where affected stakeholders would be notified e.g. Thames Water, local sailing club and this Committee. However, there were no notifications about routine incidents. With regard to the incident that was under investigation there would have been a notification released. A representative commented that the Parish Council had not been informed and should be added to the list of stakeholders notified of incidents. The notification should be undertaken as soon as possible after the incident occurred to inform river users. If there were any serious threat stakeholders like the sailing club would be contacted. A representative asked if there was a procedure for this and the Environment Agency said that they would check this. He also suggested that if there was no procedure one should be written. Lucy Bee reported that there could be pollution incidents that they were not aware of. If Thames Water were aware of any incidents they should be contacting stakeholders to inform them.

The representative from Thames Water reported that if there was an incident there was a process that was followed. Key stakeholders would be informed and vulnerable residents. Different communication techniques would be used according to who was being informed e.g. text alerts, a message board on the website or direct telephone calls. Going forward the EDRM trigger data for this AMP period could pick up information every one or two minutes (for AMP 6 the trigger data was not highly sophisticated and only picked up data every 15 mins). By the end of December Thames Water would enable website access so the public could view this information including discharge points and if there had been a spill. Historical data would be more difficult.

There were six sites such as Witney, Port Meadow Oxford and Cassington which fed into the River Thames through their subsidiaries and there was a text alert system so if they were ‘storming’ from those sites local customers on the database would be informed. This was not an automatic system and was quite onerous so would not be duplicated elsewhere.

Action: Environment Agency