There will be a rise in the scale of sewage discharge into rivers and waterways due to extreme weather events as a result of the climate crisis, MPs have been told. Storm overflows are designed to released diluted raw sewage and water runoff into rivers and waterways after extreme weather events. Chisholm said raw sewage and runoff were discharged into rivers much more frequently. Figures show that in 2020 water companies discharged raw sewage into rivers more than 400,000 times over 3.1m hours. The cost of properly tackling the crisis and reducing discharges of sewage from storm overflows to an absolute minimum could run into billions of pounds, MPs heard.

Source: The Guardian May 26, 2021 16:30 UTC