{"id":405625,"date":"2026-02-03T12:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/405625\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T12:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T12:53:07","slug":"sewage-pollution-crackdown-and-lower-bills-in-major-water-shake-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/405625\/","title":{"rendered":"Sewage pollution crackdown and lower bills in major water shake-up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There are plans to work on a new national water strategy for Wales for the next 25 years, replacing a document published in 2015.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Water companies&#8217; ability to self-monitor and report their performance in areas such as minimising pollution will also be reviewed, &#8220;recognising there are concerns about the robustness of these systems&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Steps to &#8220;provide greater assurance&#8221; could include more automation and inspections.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tougher controls over the spreading of sewage and septic tank sludge to land as fertiliser in farming are also proposed, as are limits on using digestate from anaerobic digestion plants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Afonydd Cymru said it was &#8220;particularly encouraged&#8221; by this proposal, with inappropriate spreading of this material among the &#8220;chief contributors to high nutrient levels in Welsh rivers&#8221; as well as causing &#8220;specific, catastrophic incidents&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Chief executive Gail Davies-Walsh said, overall, the government&#8217;s proposals were welcome, offering &#8220;significant potential to effect positive change for rivers&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are plans to work on a new national water strategy for Wales for the next 25 years,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-405625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}