People

Water quality is a prominent issue among political and media priorities, and water management companies are under increasing pressure to reduce their environmental impact. However, a pollution control expert emphasized that we should focus more on shared public responsibility, not just on water managers.

«When people are worried about the state of the water, I usually ask: What are you doing to improve it? Many people throw away wet wipes and feminine hygiene products, or pour oil and grease down the drain, which can have a detrimental effect on the aquatic environment. If you drive a car, where does the road runoff go?” they said.

It is essential that the emphasis goes beyond the widely debated issue of spillover from unitary systems.

“This is not only the fault of the water management. It’s all our fault. We are the ones who generate the wastewater that goes to the collectorsthat we want to be in the river, then we all have a responsibility to help solve this problem.

They insist that it is necessary to achieve “shifting responsibility”added: “We need to spread the blame and ‘spread the love’.”

An executive from a European water management company agreed on the importance of changing attitudes on the part of the public. According to him, “education, training and transparency” is needed to achieve this change. “But that’s not enough: you have to back it up with the right data and information from across the network.”

Increasing interaction with residents and sharing more information about local water quality is key. “In some places, certainly in the smaller rural and suburban areas, information can be shared on social networks and can be very valuable”explained another manager. “When people know that there’s an overflow point in the sewer system that gets dumped over and over again, it seems to really push them, which is great.”

However, they added that “it would be great if we could have the same level of interest and analytics on other sources of pollution” such as car and sludge emissions, and not just DSUs.

All participants in the report agreed that the fight against DSU must not be detrimental to efforts to tackle other causes of water pollution.

From a UK perspective: “The reason DSU is in the news today is because Surfers Against Sewage ran a brilliant media campaign. They shared their arguments and now the next law and the next technology will reflect that.”

“But there’s a catch: we can’t focus on one or two things and ignore the rest. Otherwise, five years from now, there will be an uproar about why we have problem B, when we’ve spent all of our time, effort, and money on problem A.”