The U.K.'s surfers against sewage

Privatized U.K. water utilities have failed to upgrade Victorian plumbing, and 75% of U.K. rivers now contain unsafe levels of raw sewage. A group of athlete-activists are lobbying for change.

LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:

I often think of the U.K., where I live, as somewhere between America and Europe - halfway between U.S.-style free-market capitalism and the more regulated economies of Europe. So I was surprised when I learned about the water industry here - how deregulated water companies are and, either because or despite that, how polluted the country's coasts and rivers have become. Three-quarters of England's rivers have unsafe levels of raw sewage. And I went to meet a bunch of surfers who are trying to change that.

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LESLEY KAZAN-PINFIELD: I like to watch and see if there's any seals.

FRAYER: Seals?

KAZAN-PINFIELD: Oh, yeah, yeah. Quite often, they just sort of bob around.

FRAYER: Forty years ago, Lesley Kazan-Pinfield met a surfer, fell in love and settled down near a stunning beach in Cornwall, southwest England.

So we're at this pristine beach. The wind is blowing. People are walking their dogs. There are a couple surfers in the water. And just off shore - and this looks beautiful - blue water, you're talking about seals, wildlife. But just off shore here...

KAZAN-PINFIELD: ...You might be swimming or surfing, and there's a - you know, a piece of feces in front of you.

FRAYER: Human feces, toilet paper, used tampons floating in the water where she was surfing. When England first built sewers in the 19th century, they piped wastewater out into the sea, but they didn't treat it. London's River Thames smelled so bad they called it the Great Stink, and MPs refused to sit in Parliament next to the river. In the 1980s, Lesley's local water company started macerating the solids - liquefying them. So you wouldn't see sewage in the water, but surfers would get...

KAZAN-PINFIELD: ...Eye infections, ear infections, throat infections. I mean, obviously, vomiting and diarrhea.

FRAYER: Sick of this, literally, Lesley and her surf buddies in 1990 founded the Surfers Against Sewage, which has since grown into one of the U.K.'s most famous charities, staging protests, raising this issue in the media...

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Sewage being pumped directly into the sea.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Chemicals, agricultural runoff...

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: Eight hundred twenty-four sewage spills...

FRAYER: ...And winning the fight for sewage treatment and environmental regulation.

GILES BRISTOW: So we're going to just walk down to the beach, I think.

FRAYER: Decades later, I catch up with the Surfers' executive team doing a cold plunge after a long day of meetings.

BRISTOW: I'm Giles Bristow, I'm the chief executive of Surfers Against Sewage.

FRAYER: Nowadays, most U.K. wastewater does get treated, and Giles says the Surfers have a new focus.

BRISTOW: Kind of fat-cat water company execs are taking huge bonuses.

FRAYER: The privatization of U.K. utilities, which began in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher...

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MARGARET THATCHER: Mr. Speaker, as the honorable gentleman is aware...

FRAYER: ...Aimed to get investors to foot the bill to upgrade Victorian-era water pipes.

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THATCHER: That the water privatization, I believe, will go very successfully indeed.

FRAYER: It did not, though. Charles Watson runs the environmental group River Action. I asked him about my local water utility in London.

CHARLES WATSON: Thames Water, the biggest water utility in Europe - it's basically bankrupt. They had a shareholder that was a private equity investor who loaded the company's balance sheet with debt and then stripped out huge special dividends and then sort of ran away and sold on to somebody else.

FRAYER: The result, despite the Surfers' campaign and so much progress in recent decades, is that Britain's water quality is declining again.

WATSON: We saw 3.6 million hours of raw sewage being dumped into Britain's rivers last year. If people did that in France or continental Europe, people go to jail.

FRAYER: That's what the U.K.'s new center-left government, elected this past summer, is promising to do - fine water companies that pollute, even jail executives, and close a loophole that allowed sewage spills to double last year alone. And nowhere is that loophole more apparent than in Henley...

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FRAYER: ...A bucolic town on the River Thames that's famous for an annual rowing regatta, where participants have gotten sick just from getting splashed with water contaminated with E. coli.

DAVE WALLACE: So this is the center of Henley. So we're just sort of opposite an outflow.

FRAYER: So there's a pipe coming out from underneath the street, and then there's pretty fast-flowing water here. And it...

WALLACE: Yeah.

FRAYER: ...Hasn't rained for days, actually. So this is not rain running.

WALLACE: No, and I think there's another one over here.

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FRAYER: Local Dave Wallace shows me a combined sewer overflow pipe, where untreated raw sewage flows into the Thames. U.K. law allows water companies to do this in exceptional circumstances. Now, that's supposed to mean once or twice a year, if huge rainfall floods the system. But water companies have been doing it regularly, even when it's sunny outside.

WALLACE: It's this picturesque, quintessential U.K. town, and here we have an open sewer, you know? I mean, and we're sort of not living in Victorian times. We're in 2024. This stuff should be sorted out.

FRAYER: Dave is trying to do that. He's a former fintech guy turned citizen scientist volunteer...

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WALLACE: This is what we use for getting the water samples.

FRAYER: Wow.

...Who tests water samples from the River Thames weekly. He needed an extra hand, but he made me wear rubber gloves.

Incredible to have to protect yourself from the...

WALLACE: Well, I'd feel awful if you went back and (laughter)...

FRAYER: Oh.

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FRAYER: So I'm holding this test tube - all the way to the top?

WALLACE: Yeah, if possible.

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WALLACE: I mean, you can see that's already...

FRAYER: Oh, it's turning pink.

WALLACE: ...Turning pink.

FRAYER: Is that good or bad?

WALLACE: That's bad.

FRAYER: Oh.

WALLACE: And then the phosphates.

FRAYER: Phosphates and nitrates showed ecologically damaging levels of agricultural runoff, and E. coli was nearly six times what's safe. I was glad I wore those rubber gloves. This river, Dave says...

WALLACE: I don't know. It's intrinsically part of everything that is kind of English. Like, it comes from the Cotswolds all the way down to the sea. And like so many rivers around the world, it's the lifeblood of the countries, the places. The history of the U.K. is the history of the Thames.

FRAYER: The power to protect this river and other U.K. waterways - to fully fund regulators and enforce environmental laws - lies just downstream from here, at the U.K. Parliament.

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