Thames details 250 sewage sites earmarked for upgrade by 2025

Thames Water has published details of which sewage treatment and network site are earmarked for upgrade, following its earlier commitment of a record £1.6bn for action over the next two years to reduce storm discharges and pollutions.

Details are provided transparently via an alphabetical list of sites. For instance, Chobham sewage treatment works in Surrey will receive £12m to ensure a higher quality of treated effluent by the end of the year, while Witney sewage works in Oxfordshire will get a £17m capacity upgrade by early 2024.

Thames has also updated its voluntary EDM Map to include information on these plans at individual site level.

The information was released as the company published a report, Improving water quality in the River Thames catchment, detailing its wider plans to improve water quality by 2025 and its progress so far.

The report covered: eliminating polluting discharges through targeted interventions; partnership working in its three Smarter Water Catchments in the Crane, Chess and Evenlode (with a ‘Rethinking Rivers’ programme submitted to the Environment Agency for PR24 to roll Smarter Water Catchment lessons out on a bigger scale); and discharging high quality, compliant treated effluent.

In her foreword to the report, Thames chief executive Sarah Bentley restated her commitment to improvement and transparency: “In summarising what needs to be done, my approach is to ‘speak up’ – by stating clearly that there are serious problems that we need to fix; to ‘open up’ – by providing full and open information about what is happening; and of course to ‘clean up’ - by doing more of what we know needs to be done to improve the situation, and doing it as quickly and effectively as possible.”

Only 6% of rivers in the Thames region are in good ecological status, with the company responsible for a third of problems – “which is more than any other sector” – Bentley acknowledged.