What did you miss?
Countryfile put the microscope on a pretty harrowing environmental issue across England tonight (19 May).
In a segment presented by Joe Crowley, viewers learned how wet winters can often overwhelm our sewage infrastructure for months on end, leading to revolting pollution in rivers that affects not just eco-systems and wildlife, but also humans.
Understandably, this insight kicked up quite the response on social media, with people calling out the Environment Agency.
What, how and why?
Crowley, who works at The One Show and BBC Panorama too, began by revealing that in 2023 our rivers and seas were subjected to 3.5 million hours of untreated sewage contact.
He went on to explain: “What you might not realise is that untreated sewage is also discharged in dry weather due to something called ground water infiltration. When we have a wet winter, the water level in the ground rises up and that means that in some places the sewer pipes underneath our feet are actually sitting in ground water.
“So when those pipes are cracked and broken, the ground water gets in and it increases the volume of the sewage – such that the sewage treatment works just can’t cope and some of it ends up getting dumped into our rivers.”
The Countryfile star then paid a visit to the River Chess Association chairman Paul Jennings, who’d been closely watching a local chalk stream that was now 11 weeks into its horrific sewage flow. This type of discharge is illegal in some places, but the Environment Agency was yet to tackle the problem.
Later in the episode, Crowley spoke to another member of the public responsible for reporting examples of this ecological disaster to the aforementioned government department. Upon Countryfile’s own investigation, though, the researchers discovered that his complaints were documented as one single event despite gathering countless bits of evidence.
How did Countryfile viewers respond to these scenes?
Disgusted by the reality of this bacteria reaching our water, Countryfile viewers were up in arms while posting on social media.
“We need a new government, who will make the Environment Agency do their job properly, and get these people prosecuted & imprisoned,” claimed one of them.
This report on #countryfile just shows how badly the @EnvAgency are letting the countryside down. Essentially fiddling the numbers on #sewagedischarges. So disappointed that there is seemingly noone holding these huge profit making water companies to account!
— Katie Pez (@KatiePerrott1) May 19, 2024
Countryfile airs Sundays on BBC One.
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