Severn Trent 'gone past the point of excuses' as it makes Shropshire rivers investment pledge

At the inaugural 'Save Our Severn' meeting at Coalbrookdale Community Centre on Friday, Severn Trent representatives revealed the water company's plans to improve river quality, storm overflow and abstraction licence management.

Head of water quality and environment, Jason Rogers, spoke at the meeting and said the firm had "gone past the point of excuses as a water company" and "recognised that we have to deliver".

A presentation by the organisation's representatives stated there are 138 Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) in Shropshire and that "nearly half of the county's CSOs spilled more than 20 times" during 2023.

A following slide stated the business has "targeted these sites as a priority for solution delivery".

Severn Trent said £450 million is being invested this year to 'make a difference' and that £1.1 billion of investment is being made in their programme up until 2030.

The company revealed during their presentation at the meeting that there will be £214 million of investment across 200 improvements in the county "mostly focused on river quality, storm overflows and abstraction licence management", alongside £82 million of investment to "complete detailed options appraisal for the three new inland bathing water in Shropshire to improve water quality towards bathing quality".

Jason Rogers said at the meeting: "In Shropshire we've got £214 million to spend allocated, in the next five years to improve water quality and the 200 improvements that we have identified.

"We know exactly what the solutions are for the overflows and sewage treatment works. We've actually got 51 interventions in the last few two to three months.

"As a business we're absolutely laser focused on that we need to get this done or the majority done before the weather changes in the winter because this is when we get the major changes on the overflows."

The company's representatives revealed their initiatives to improve Shropshire's waterways that included raising weir walls and re-purposing unused huge-scale concrete tanks, as well as finding news ways to treat water and reducing the impact of stormy weather by installing flap-valves, and water butts.

During their presentation, the water company claimed: "Severn Trent are currently responsible for 14 per cent of the reasons for rivers not achieving good quality status however we want to get down to less than two per cent impact by 2030".

"We've got 138 CSOs in Shropshire, 68 of those…are spilling more than 20 times per year," the head of water quality and environment continued.

"We know which of those CSOs are, and part of our plans we have got solutions that are being identified for every single one of those overflows.

"Some may be a relatively cheap fix, others are hundreds of millions of pounds of investment.

"Shrewsbury is one of the areas where it needs significant investment to get the infrastructure to the right standard, but we have a plan for that and it will be delivered in the next three to four years.

"We're not looking backwards, we're looking forwards. We recognise that we have to invest and we have to move really quickly."