Why isn’t Kevin Hollinrake standing up for Malton voters against sewage pollution? - Yorkshire Post Letters

Thirsk and Malton voters who care about our environment will soon have an important and far reaching decision to make; one which will have a major impact on the UK’s direction of travel in tackling the multiple threats to our environment.

Our representative in parliament recently voted there to block a proposal to place a legal duty on water companies in England and Wales “to make improvements to their sewerage systems and demonstrate progressive reductions in the harm caused by discharges of untreated sewage”.

This might be understandable, although not excusable, if Mr Hollinrake was able to take the parochial view that sewage pollution is not a problem in his constituency. However that is very far from the case.

Government statistics published by The Rivers Trust show that his Thirsk and Malton constituency is one of the very worst in Yorkshire for dumping of raw sewage in waterways.

In 2021 there were 4,773 overflow incidents in his constituency lasting for a combined duration of 33,353 hours. That’s an average thirteen spills a day; a virtually continual high volume flow of raw sewage into the waterways.

Of the 46 constituencies in Yorkshire only two were worse than Thirsk and Malton. Many areas kept pollution levels down to a fraction of those occurring in Thirsk and Malton. This suggests that where there is a political will things can be done.

The level of sewage pollution across the country is a scandal in itself but equally scandalous is the government instructing its members of parliament to allow water companies to keep doing it.

When it comes to the General Election people who care about the environment will need to consider this.

Will someone who is unable to stand up to his Party bosses to protect the rivers in his own constituency be capable of playing a useful role in combating the colossal challenges that the environment faces globally?

Will a government that puts the interests of water companies and their overpaid directors ahead of healthy rivers be able to take effective action on the wider issues of global warming, pollution and loss of biodiversity?