If you’ve read the news recently, chances are you will have heard about water pollution. If you’ve walked along a river, then you’ve probably seen it, possibly without realising; it is a problem that at its smallest can easily go unnoticed but still cause harm, or at its greatest lead to the closure of entire waterways. But why exactly is it a problem? What causes it? And how can it be fixed?

Water pollution occurs when waterways and ground water become contaminated with harmful substances. This can happen in a number of ways and have a range of effects which are .

Such effects include threats of human health, for example in the form of exposure to chemical pollutants such as nitrates which enter water through animal waste, fertilizers and sewage releases. These impact the ability for the blood to carry oxygen and have been . A major risk factor in chemical exposure is public awareness, telling pollution from unpolluted water at a glance is not always possible, and so the impossibility of knowing chemical exposure is a serious risk.

But the damages are not constrained to just human health, with pollution events being potentially cataclysmic for ecosystems. The release of nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff and sewage can cause a process known as , referring to excessive nutrient enrichment of waterways, causing plant and algae blooms which can cause acidification and deoxygenation of water, degrading aquatic habitats and killing their inhabitants.

Not only does pollution harm health and biodiversity but also can have negative socioeconomic consequences for human communities such as seaside areas which rely on healthy waterways for economic activity such as tourism and fishing.

Given the potential for major harm, the state of water pollution in the UK can be considered dire, with there being . But what is behind this epidemic?

While there are multiple causes of these pollution incidents, including plastic pollution and agricultural runoff, the predominant cause (in England) is the release of untreated or insufficiently treated wastewater, with

However, action is being taken to try and redress this issue, with there being a number of existing policies intended to prevent and combat water pollution, some of which have been recently implemented amidst the ongoing controversy around the worsening state of pollution.

Just last year, Ofwat, the body responsible for regulating the UK’s water and sewage industry, was granted to regulate the behaviour of water companies. This package includes new powers for imposing financial sanctions on company executives, banning unjustified bonuses in the case of serious breaches of industry standards, bringing criminal charges against persistent lawbreakers, ensuring closer monitoring of sewage outlets and introducing automatic penalties for wrongdoing.

Such policies have been seen in action just last month, when a in funding for repairing harm to rivers was secured through the enforcement of sanctions, constituting a 47% increase over the money raised last year.

Evidently, despite the scale of pollution in England there are some policy successes, but just how successful are they?

While it is still early, the current trajectory seems to suggest that the successes of these policies have been limited. The shows that spills are an ongoing problem across the country. Furthermore, as of this year, a mere , demonstrating the extent of the harm that pollution has caused. The extent of this ongoing harm is such that the current trajectory spells

As it stands therefore, while some progress has been made in tackling the problem of water pollution, the current framework falls short of the mark and there are a number of leaks in the system that need to be plugged. There are a number of ways in which this could be done, and the following suggestions highlight some potential policy avenues for ensuring that pollution, and its negative effects are halted.

Firstly, raising public awareness is paramount. As previously mentioned, pollution is not always obvious, and this can result in harm as people unknowingly interact with polluted water sources. A potential remedy for this would be to introduce some form of system of public information dispersion. At its simplest, this could take the form of putting up signs around polluted water bodies, or at a more complex level, a system of digital alerts, akin to the alert system, could be introduced by the government to ensure that the public is aware of, and therefore able to avoid, water pollution threats. This system of raising awareness could also benefit waterway restoration projects, being integrated into community cleanup schemes to involve community stakeholders in the protection and restoration of their waterways.

However, such policies only react to the problem, while the best solutions will also aim to prevent it. Subsequently, improving the existing preventative measures is paramount. For example, the financial sanctions could be strengthened to ensure that companies will think twice about risking pollution incidents, rather than being able to weather the consequences. Furthermore, the avenue of public ownership, which has been at the forefront of the debate in recent months, could be considered as a means of ensuring that water companies are accountable to the communities that they serve, and therefore liable to avoid pollution incidents, as the issue of water quality would become a wholly politicised, potentially electoral question, creating a strong mandate for cleaner waterways.

Such policies are not definitive, but rather illustrative, showing that there are ways in which the current system can be fixed, creating a water-tight policy solution for a healthier, cleaner water system for all.

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