[makomk]

The Victorian-era sewage systems described in this article are actually one of the key reasons that sewage is ending up in rivers and the sea in the first place. Notice how they worked: sewage was collected, pumped, and dumped downstream of London. It was not treated. Most of the UK's sewage treatment is retrofitted to sewage systems that were never designed to have it. This causes various problems, the main one being that rainwater drainage and sewage are mixed in many areas and this overwhelms the sewage system during heavy rain.

(As for why it became a key election issue, well, basically the British press lied to make it one - the BBC included. They made an increase in monitoring of sewage discharges look like a massive increase in sewage discharged whilst tricking people into thinking monitoring had got worse by deceptively-worded articles about the few overflows that weren't monitored yet, they told people the Environmental Agency was lying about only recently being able to measure the full extent of sewage discharges based on a hnadful of previously-recorded incidents, they claimed other European countries which still had Victorian-esque sewage systems with no treatment plants that just pumped directly into their rivers and seas in some urban areas were doing a better job, and so on.)

[Mvandenbergh]

To be fair, while all of those things are true (and in fact the poor state of many rivers is more due to farming and to fully consented but still high-nitrate effluents from waste water treatment than to CSOs) the industry has really not even bothered to defend itself here. It's like they're just cowed by the criticism.

[lazide]

Or will get paid to clean it up, so why try to stop it?

[brianmcc]

It also seems another Brexit issue - treatment chemicals being that bit harder to bring in:

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/brexit-to-blame-for-u...

[Mvandenbergh]

Not in practice, no. Companies were provided with a regulatory position statement from the EA that they would not usually be prosecuted if they ran out of treatment chemicals due to something that wasn't their fault. In fact, there never was a shortage due to either Brexit, Covid or a combo and this was never used.