South West Water is claiming it has no legal obligation to keep rivers and seawater clean of sewage in its defence against a Devon swimmer who is taking the water company to court.
Jo Bateman, who attempts to swim every day off the coast of Exmouth, is taking legal action against South West Water, claiming its frequent sewage discharges into the sea have taken away her legal right to a public “amenity”.
However, in its defence to Ms Bateman’s claim, seen by i, the water firm states no one has a legal right to swim in the sea.
It sounds like kind of an emergency situation, where concurrent breakdowns of infrastructure led to an existing sewage station being overwhelmed. The sewage had to be hauled away, and the argument is over whether dumping it in the ocean was reasonable or whether it was viable to haul it to another sewage station.
But whatever the outcome, it doesn’t sound like it’s something that one would expect to occur on a regular basis. That is, it’s not like, say, a combined sewer that intrinsically needs to dump untreated sewage into waterways when it’s particularly rainy (or, rather, I don’t know whether this particular sewer was a combined sewer, but the specific problem that led to the trucks dumping sewage relied upon breakdowns).
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they chose the least costly option.
You know goddamn well how they determined viability was whether it was cheaper. Don’t fall for their bullshit.
TIL! Instantly intuitive graphic. Cool. Gross but cool!
Edit: TIL 2: that SVGy png is nearly illegible in dark mode