Sewage UK: Feargal Sharkey demands 'pathetic' water industry refunds public as 'we've all been cheated' and given 'bland excuses'

“We have all been cheated” and “my message to the water industry is it’s over, you are finished”. Fierce sewage campaigner Feargal Sharkey says the water industry can no longer get away with illegally spilling sewage into UK rivers and seas, paying its bosses and shareholders extortionate amounts of money and getting the public to pay by hiking water bills.

He said the public are angry and won't sit back and watch the industry continue with what it has been doing for the last 30 years. The former singer of 80s rock band The Undertones warned the industry that its time is up.

Feargal Sharkey is one of the loudest voices against sewage pollution and I sat down with him on Wednesday 31 January to hear more of what he has to say. First of all he told me it was his “hobby of fly fishing”, being the former chairman of the oldest fly fishing club in the country and seeing the decline of Amwell Magna Fishery in Hertfordshire that got him “directly interested” in campaigning. 

He said: “We found ourselves put in a position where we ended up taking the Environment Agency to the doors of the High Court, simply to get them to do something about the water levels and the volume of water in the river at that time. That problem has now been resolved but that simple experience of why 60 ladies and gentlemen of a certain age had to fundamentally take the Environment Agency to the High Court made me oddly curious about what else might possibly be going on. 

“That experience gave me an itch. And I stupidly, foolishly naively scratched that itch. And as the rest of the nation knows, every time I've scratched that itch, I've just ended up with an even bigger, bloody itch”.

Feargal said there has been an “extraordinary lack of political oversight and a lack of really paying attention to what has been going on now for 30 years” which has led us to the mess we are now in. The Angling Trust recently revealed that over 80% of English rivers are failing pollution standards and he said this shows “we have a regulatory system that has failed”, adding, “what in God's name has the Environment Agency been doing for the last 30 years?”. 

He went on to slam the water companies themselves, telling me the customers have been paying for a service they have not been getting. He said water companies have “from day one a statutory obligation to build and operate and maintain a sewage system and I'm quoting, capable of essentially dealing with the contents of those sewers. That's the game they're in. That's the business they're in. They've not delivered that. 

“They've not maintained that legal obligation. The way to fix this is for the regulator simply to apply the law and to do their job. That would be a massive step forward right there, because that would be something that simply has never happened for 30 years.”

The government and the industry claims that the UK’s problems with sewage leaks across the country are caused by the legacy of the Victorians - the former environment secretary, Therese Coffey, said in April last year that “sewage overflows stem from our principally Victorian infrastructure”. Feargal thinks otherwise, arguing it is “yet another completely pathetic, facile excuse put forward by the industry trying to deflect attention away from themselves”. He said: “Only 12% of our sewage system is actually built by the Victorians. You may as well blame the Romans for traffic jams.

“The question we should actually be asking is not who built the sewage system, but where has our money gone? Are we ever going to see a refund?”.

He remarked that the “reality is that we are facing bigger bills” using Thames Water as an example. He said the firm wants to increase bills by 40% “simply because they cannot afford the interest payments on the debt they've got that company into.” He added public money should not be used to bail out water firms, which “have made off with £72bn of our cash” and "racked up £64bn in debt".

He added: “That was the regulator's job to protect the customer from that kind of profiteering and that kind of corporate greed.” He said he expects Thames Water to crumble and fold over its rising debt, and hopes it does to send a clear message to other water companies that they cannot carry on as they have done.

Feargal cited Jo Bateman’s latest case against South West Water as an example of how failed the industry is. He told me: “The wonderful woman is now taking South West Water to court by herself. That's the regulator's job. What in God's name have they been doing?”.

During our chat he delivered a stark warning and message to the water industry. He said: “My message to the water industry is it's over. You're finished. If you think you're going to carry on doing what you have done for the last 30 years you are badly mistaken.”

He added that “the country's angry and I think the country has every right” and he has “total belief in the ability and sense of fairness and justice of the British people” to fight back. He said: “I cannot think of a single person in this country that is prepared to sit back and allow our environment and our rivers and our beaches to be destroyed by sewage pollution simply to feather the bank, the consent of shareholders and the fat cat greedy executives that are running the water industry.

“I would demand that the country goes out there and expresses that frustration and anger in the way that we've all been cheated and we have been cheated.”

He told me he can barely leave his house and get on the Tube to London without being stopped to talk about sewage. He said jokingly: “Now, I wish he would talk to me about other things in my life. But if it has to be sewage right now, it has to be sewage. 

“The point I'm building is that last time I had that kind of level of attention from anonymous members of the public, I had the number one record in this country. That's how much this is cut through. That's how much it has infuriated and angered people.”

As a step forward he said water companies need to start “putting their hands up and telling the truth and be honest” instead of coming up with “bland excuses” such as “blaming the weather, the rain, the wrong kind of snow and the wrong kind of leaves”. He added: “Eighty percent of all sewage dumping happened directly because of water companies and their actions. You want to guess how much of it actually happened, according to the court, because of exceptional circumstances? 

“None. Nada, zippo nothing whatsoever. It's their corporate greed and profiteering that has been driving this, not the rain.”

Next Wednesday 7 February, Feargal will be outside Cardiff’s Justice Centre in support of River Action’s legal case against DEFRA and the Environment Agency. River Action have launched the legal case claiming that both have acted unlawfully in failing to adequately protect the River Wye from agricultural pollution.  

He said: “Come and join in, bring whatever drums triangle's noise big that you've got to offer, and I'll see you outside the court at 9am on Wednesday in Cardiff.” He lastly reminded water companies to “go and do your job” and “go and comply with the law”, adding, “and by the way, can I have a refund for all the money I paid you for 30 years?”.