How dirty do we want the rivers to be?

There’s been a lot of shouting about sewage overflow and so on lately. With the assumption obviously being that there should be no such overflow. All sewage should be completely treated and the rivers left pristine. This is, of course, incorrect.

We live in a second best world, one of scarce resources. Therefore resources we use to build an entirely new storm drain system, separate from the sewage one, must be diverted from some other possibly desirable usage. Therefore the actual question to be answered is how dirty will we allow the rivers to be? So we can have more of those other things? The answer being, well, quite possibly about as dirty as they are right now:

Investment to stop sewage discharges worth more than a £1bn will only stop 3.3 per cent of spills every year by 2030.

Water companies will be allowed to spend £1.1bn on work to improve over 250 storm overflows, reducing the annual average of spills by 10,000.

No, that does not then mean that spending £30 billion will stop all spills - the first part of any problem is the cheapest to solve, it gets progressively more expensive as we eat into the problem.

This is also something not to be solved by just demanding the capitalists do it. The reason the water companies need permission to spend this money is that their returns to capital are regulated. A higher capital base, they get to charge more. So that £1.1 billion will appear on water bills in the fullness of time - plus a return. This is also not something solved by nationalising everything. Whether it’s public capital invested to gain a return or taxpaid subsidy of the water system it all still comes out of our wallets. On the very simple grounds that our wallets are the only ones around. Everything, in the end, gets paid for by the people.

The plan also includes work to improve water quality at Ilkley on the River Wharfe, a designated bathing water site,

At what cost do we just tell the people of Ilkley to go use a swimming pool like civilised people because we’re not willing to pay for making the river any less dirty? We’re sorry to have to say this but that is the only important question here and there is no way out of it either. How clean do you want it - and how much does that change when you’ve got to pay for it?