Dirty Business
Friends of the Dart Statement on Dirty Business (Channel 4)
Friends of the Dart welcomes the broadcast of Dirty Business on Channel 4. The programme lays bare the systemic failures that have allowed sewage pollution to damage rivers and coastal waters across the country. It exposes what communities and groups like ours have been saying for years: sewage pollution is the result of water company policy, regulatory weakness and corporate culture.
The portrayal of a grassroots community group fighting to uncover the truth about sewage pollution mirrors our own experience all too closely. Ordinary people should not have to become investigators simply to find out what is being discharged into their rivers. Yet without local residents organising, and forming groups like Windrush Against Sewage Pollution and Friends of the Dart, very little would be brought to light. Transparency has not been volunteered by water companies, we have had to fight for it.
The visual depiction of crumbling sewage infrastructure and decades of neglect was not exaggerated. It reflects a reality that we at Friends of the Dart are all too aware of. For years, bills have risen despite the lack of investment required to protect public health and the environment. We communicate this through data gathering, newsletters, blogs and community meetings, but seeing the physical deterioration on screen makes the scale of underinvestment undeniable.
The programme was right to frame sewage spills as environmental crimes. Across the River Dart and its tributaries, discharges have occurred repeatedly and with absolute impunity. If a private citizen polluted a river in this way, prosecutions would be swift. Yet meaningful accountability for senior executives has been conspicuously absent. That disparity is impossible to ignore and cannot continue.
The drama also laid bare the political choices that enabled this situation: deregulation, weakened oversight and allowing companies to self-monitor. Regulation was dismissed as ‘anti-business bureaucracy’ by several politicians. The consequences for rivers, coastal waters and public health have been devastating. While Friends of the Dart works constructively with the Environment Agency and supports its vital role, we have experienced first-hand how years of deregulation have constrained effective enforcement, allowing water companies to break the law over and over again.
Crucially, the programme challenges the idea that sewage dumping is accidental. It depicts what many now recognise: this has been systemic and very profitable. Polluting is policy within the water companies. When environmental damage carries no risk of prosecution and financial penalties are dwarfed by shareholder returns, any deterrent effect disappears. That reality must be acknowledged - those tasked with managing our water system are raking in enormous profits by allowing it to fail.
The use of real footage showing raw sewage discharges and ecological destruction was both deeply powerful and profoundly shocking. It is vital that the public see, unfiltered, how degraded our rivers and coastal waters have become. There is no justification for this. The UK is one of the world’s wealthiest economies and customers here are made to pay extremely high water bills. There is simply no excuse for the scale and extremity of this pollution.
The story of Heather Preen was particularly upsetting. This tragedy occurred here in South Devon - these are our local beaches. We pay tribute to Heather and extend our sincere sympathy to her family and loved ones. Her story, and the story of Reuben Santer, are a stark reminder that sewage pollution is not just an environmental issue, but a matter of public health, with real and devastating consequences for ordinary people using waters they should be able to trust.
Dirty Business has shown that the lethal reality of privatisation cannot be ignored. A vital public good has been run to generate returns for offshore investors and hedge funds, while customers have been left with collapsing infrastructure.In light of this, Friends of the Dart finds it difficult to see how the corporate and financing culture behind the water companies will ever change, or how the public can be expected to trust them to put this right. What is desperately needed now is radical structural change. This cannot continue and we demand that action is taken immediately.