Stockport Council launches inquiry into Mersey sewage dumps

Lisa Smart told the inquiry's first public meeting that "people in Stockport are furious"

A council has launched an inquiry into water firms pumping sewage into rivers after it found waste had been deposited into one waterway hundreds of times.

Stockport Council's investigation was launched after it found United Utilities (UU) put waste in the River Mersey 977 times in 2022.

UU said the incidents were overflows intended to help prevent flooding.

Inquiry chairwoman Lisa Smart said locals were "furious", adding: "If the government won't act, then we will."

The councillor said the problem risked "ruining our treasured rivers forever".

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said the inquiry was believed to be the first such probe into the issue by an authority in England.

Official figures showed that alongside the waste deposits, UU was responsible for 13,373 hours of sewage discharge into Stockport's waterways in 2022.

The company said it was spending an extra £230m on reducing the amount of waste it discharged into rivers, having spent £1.2bn on the issue up to 2020.

'Bit of an eye-opener'

Ms Smart told the inquiry's first public meeting that "people in Stockport are furious".

"Local people fear walking their dogs along our local rivers and streams such as the Mersey, the Goyt and Poise Brook," she said.

"We also have otters who live in the area and are being forced to swim in foul sewage.

"This is a national scandal. If the government won't act, then we will."

Councillor Mark Roberts said the river can be used for watersports and he had canoed up it with Ms Smart during a fundraising event in 2022.

He said it had been "a bit of an eye-opener when we did that to see loo roll hanging from the trees where there had been high water - and the smells as you passed through certain parts of the river course".

UU's Mark Sewell said the legislation and regulation the company works to was based around "the local aquatic ecology and aquatic life", not protecting humans who may swim in those waters.

"From a human bathing perspective, bacteria such as E.Coli and intestinal enterococci, that's what will cause sickness and gastro problems after bathing," he said.

"We don't have any bathing water drivers or bathing water standards for our wastewater discharges that discharge to rivers."

He added that there are only two designated inland river bathing waters in the UK - one in Ilkley and the other in Oxfordshire.

"These are areas where public support [and] local authority applications have led to sections of the river being designated as bathing water," he said.

"That designation has then helped to drive and facilitate improvements within that catchment."

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