River Pollution Law and Standards

Summary

Industrial effluent may be discharged directly into rivers or first into sewage works for treatment with domestic sewage. No effluent can be discharged to a river—either from a factory or from a sewage works—without the consent of the water authority which controls the quality of discharges by attaching conditions to its consent.

When the 1974 Control of Pollution Act is brought fully into force, existing consent conditions will be reviewed and conditions may be made more stringent or be relaxed, depending on the use to which the river is put. Many of these consent conditions will be toned down, so that discharges which previously exceeded ‘unrealistic’ consent conditions, and which could be improved only by considerable spending, will become legal.

Under the Control of Pollution Act, members of the public will be given access to full details about the quality of effluent discharges from individual factories and sewage works. They will also have the right to prosecute dischargers who exceed their legal consent conditions.