The water that runs off our traffic-filled roads ends up in our rivers, but we know little about it, it’s hardly monitored and improving the quality of that runoff is a huge task.
Join us for this special episode of Planet Possible in collaboration with Watershed Investigations as we dig into the realities of highway runoff . . We’re joined from the front line by Jo Bradley from Stormwater Shepherds as she carries out water quality testing and hear from both National Highways, who own the strategic road network and the Environment Agency, the environmental regulator in England.
We explore how we manage these flows and what the future looks like – and of course we’ll offer our guests the Planet Possible magic wand too.
Post-interview clarification on behalf of National Highways:
”National Highways developed its water runoff risk assessment tool in partnership with the Environment Agency, and it was agreed it was fit for purpose. Similarly, on the M6 J21A-26, seven Vortex Separation Chambers have been installed as part of upgrade work to keep pollutants in check. Along with drainage, these devices use hydrodynamic separation to capture and retain insoluble particles such as silt, hydrocarbons and debris from the surface water systems.”
Our 2024 season is supported by Atkins Réalis
Hi I’m Nicki roach and this is planet possible hi I’m Rachel Savage and this is the Watershed investigations podcast only not as you know it so welcome to this special episode that we’ve created together and that we want to share with listeners of both planet possible and waterers sheded investig s and we’re
Covering a topic which certainly here in the UK has been hitting headlines recently but it isn’t a new challenge Highway runoff so Rachel tell us why it’s so important well National highways is responsible for around 18,000 outfalls and around 7,700 soakaways that funnel Road Runner away from the
Highways into waterways or to soak into land and last year at Watershed we published an investigation with the guardian that mapped where all those what national highways called the most risky out fors again sensitive and important rivers and habitats and found that hundreds of the outfalls are close
To or even in environments that have legal Environmental Protections in place so there might be Tri siis or chalk streams or whatever and as we know the runoff can contain lots and lots of nasty stuff like heavy metals hydrocarbons microplastics and other problematic substances of Tire Weare so
Somebody that knows a lot about this is Joe Bradley and she is from stormw shephards and in this clip my colleague from water shed investigations lyanna josier is interviewing her out on the road Network here it’s Woods really lovely it’s a really lovely Woodland with little squirrels and things so it’s such
A shame that this water course is polluted in a little patch of Woodland on the edge of the m6 Motorway by Preston in Lancashire I’m meeting Joe Bradley from stormwater Shepherds a charity working to restore the health of our waterways we’re literally meters from the m6 you can just see the traffic
Over there Joe’s Keen to show me a highway outl where all the rain that washes over the roads carrying with it all the muck ends up spilling out I’ve never actually seen one but Joe spends much of her time assessing and monitoring them yeah very much microplastic tire wear particles um but
Also breake dust clutch dust um exhaust emissions unspent fuel coming out of the back of your car um fuel oils lubricating oils uh scream wash ad blue all the chemicals associated with vehicles and you know it’s just your own vehicle it’s just one car you don’t
Think oh well it’s not very much but it all adds up right absolutely if you multiply It Up by 114,000 Vehicles you’ve suddenly got a whole lot of pollution so we’re just going to go up this way and we’ll see where the motorway disch charge comes in so what
You’ve got here is is a stream this is legally a little stream it’s protected in law like every other Water Co in this country but in the pipes coming under the motorway you’ve got the stream in one pipe and then the discharge off the motorway in the other pipe it’s the size
Of a pond and it’s pretty murky it’s like something out of Game of Thrones it’s dark and dense and the trees are growing out of the water because the pool is ever expanding well it looks more like a Cess pool last time I was down here we found blood worms and water
FAS and nothing else we’re in surely in Lancashire it’s come down off the West penai Moors this should be a little babbling stream that supports Stone flies and Main flies and and freshwater shrimps and leeches and dragon flies and all sorts of aquatic creatures but it’s not because it’s grossly polluted every
Time it rains with toxins and oil you can actually see the oil on the surface this pipe literally just goes straight into the stream there is no treatment at all treatment is the stream is it yeah well absolutely the treatment is sort of happening in this pool but that’s
Illegal because this is a natural water CA now I know from the analysis that we’ve done that this contains toxic levels of polyaromatic hydrocarbons and yet we’ve got creatures watering from this because it’s their local source of water so it’s just horrific poly aromatic hydrocarbons is that definitely
From Road runoff y so here because we’re in a rural area there’s no other obvious sources of pH is and the the problem with polyaromatic hydrocarbons the reason I get so agitated about them which I do is that they are they’re truly horrible so they don’t kill the
Creatures they mutate them they them to deform embryonic stage so they’re deformed before they’re even fully grown so they then can’t Thrive or feed they can’t always reproduce effectively but also some of the effects of pH is affect their behavior so they become unable to evade Predators they become unable to
Chase their own prey so it’s a nasty Insidious long-term pollution that that causes long-term harm to the ecosystem but it doesn’t necessarily kill them and so you might might come and do a a sample on a river and go well actually we found some may flies and some Stone
Flies and some freshwater shrimps so that’s okay but actually if you were to look under a microscope they’re smaller than they should be they’re not reproducing it as effectively as they should be they’re accumulating these poisons within their body flesh and so then that bio accumulates up the food
Chain but because there’s no floating dead fish nobody really notices and nobody really cares except you and me and they are carcinogens as well aren’t they they cause cancer could Road runoff potentially harm human health so theoretically there is a risk that somebody were to swim you wouldn’t swim
In here but no you wouldn’t but if you were to swim in a river that had Motorway runoff in it then theoretically there could be a risk I haven’t seen any research either domestically or internationally on that but if there is laboratory research to show that if you
Put it onto the skin of a rat’s and mice it causes carcinogenic effects and cancerous tumors so so we either investigate that risk and manage it or we make sure that people don’t swim in rivers where there is a known source of polyaromatic hydrocarbons well you talk
About known source I mean how many of these are there around the country oh Cy now you’re asking so National highways know they’ve got 18,000 well I know this one isn’t on their list so this is 18,000 And1 so that I think they’ve got a lot more than they think they’ve got
But National highways only operate 3% of the road Network so then if you consider all the other 90 7% of the RADS there’s probably a million of them we think nationally going from big ones like this to teeny weeny little ones in the countryside they don’t all need
Treatment but we need to acknowledge that they’re all there and they’re all causing pollution they might not need treatment but no one knows cuz they’re not being tested they’re not being monitored are they no so National highways did some monitoring between 10 and 15 years ago and built a model so
That they can model the risk from these outfalls so since then they haven’t done any monitoring and the environment agency hav’t never done any monitoring of this problem apart from some very small projects over the years I’ve done some both when I was at the agency and
Since I’ve left the agency I’ve done more since I left the agency well quickly tell us what agency were you working for Joe I was at the environment agency for over 25 years I did pollution prevention for most of that time Urban pollution prevention was my primary
Topic and I got really fixed on road runoff and the pollution from Road run off so was anyone else interested in that were you alone voice in the environment agency I I was often a lone voice in the environment agency on a number of topics um I definitely had
Trouble getting people to pay attention to pollution from Road runoff because we had very little data and also because this sort of pollution has no funding streams Highway authorities don’t pay for permits so there’s no income associated with these discharges and none of the money that comes in through
Road tax or fuel tax comes to the environment agency so it’s a chicken and egg isn’t it there’s no money so they won’t investigate but without investigating they don’t understand the problem so they can’t generate any money so we were in a difficult situation and nothing happened but tell me about the
Investigations that you’ve been doing now that you’ve left the environment agency and you tested this one and you got the results with you talk me through what you found in this murky cess pool all of the polyaromatic hydrocarbons for which there is an environmental quality standard failed that Environmental
Quality standard and they were quite dramatic failures for benzo GH peral the standard is 0.82 parts per billion but this sample that we took had 1.15 parts per billion of G benzo ghi perene in there I mean these may not seem like huge amounts but their toxicity means that even at these
Levels they can be harmful to Aquatic Life the standards are set based on the toxicity of these pollutants in order to protect the health of the river life and we are failing those standards quite significantly every time it rains at every one of these hour outfalls pretty
Much you’ve got lots of heavy metals in there as well there’s probably a cocktail effect of all these heavy metals and petrochemicals that you are measuring here these samples always fail for dissolved copper and dissolved zinc and those again are both toxic to Aquatic Life they normally come from
Sort of the brake pads of your car isn’t it so the brake pads of the cars and tires as well so they’re in the tire composition as well so they can be included in the tire wear microplastic Tire Weare particles the one thing we don’t measure is microplastic tiware particles because the laboratory
Methodology isn’t really mature enough to be simple and cheap it would be very expensive but we know that road runoff like this is the biggest terrestrial source of microplastic particles in oceans so you know this little outfall in the outskirts of chy is contributing microplastic particles all the way down
Here into Sid Brook into the river Douglas into the river Ribble and then out into the sea and contributing to the harm in ocean life as well we just don’t measure that yet but that’s just the UK and this is a global problem and nobody’s actually globally doing very
Much about this yeah I was going to say is anyone doing this right what would what would a good Highway outfall look like nobody’s doing this right yet uh what would a good Highway outfall look like well the first thing to do is capture the sediment because the
Sediment carries with it most of the pollution so the bits off your brakes the bits off your tires um a lot of the poly armatic hydrocarbons are to those bits so if you can capture the sediment that’s a huge step forward well National highways would probably say that they
Are going to be doing some cleanup some remediation and sorting out some of these highway outfalls I think it’s only four this year but tell me what do you think of their plans and what they’re doing yeah so four outfalls in one year is is not good enough when you’ve got
18,000 outfalls so they’re not going fast enough we sometimes see schemes that are too small but it doesn’t have enough capacity to capture the sediment so that they will fill up very quickly and stop working and they don’t maintain the systems that they already have so
There’s one just up the road of here from here and if you walk down the access road it’s got mature trees growing in it so nobody has driven down there to maintain that device for at least 10 years probably more so what’s the point of building these multi-million pound treatment schemes
And then not maintaining them so I mean do you think it’s just that one that’s not been maintained or you you think it’s more widespread is this something you’ve looked into I’ve been to quite a lot of Highway outfall treatment schemes and a lot of them well all the ones I
Saw last year have not been maintained in accordance with their proper maintenance schedule so all water a separator for example once it’s full it stops working and the ones we looked at last year were full full to the top you might want to have a message for National highways and the environment
Agency what could they be doing what should they be doing I I mean I I know you talked about your sort of Ideal kind of highway outfall but having worked in the agency and knowing kind of the culture and the various pulls to the P string of of the
Multiple environmental pressures um that the country is facing what would you say to them so these These outfalls are polluted there’s no question about that nobody else would be allowed to discharge this into a water environment without a permit and therefore without the appropriate regulatory control the
Agency don’t do that because there is no funding stream for it but you need to fix that so if you were to make the highway authorities apply for permits for the most polluting of these outfalls say the say the most polluting 3,000 taking a number off the top of my head
Then they would have to pay for those permit applications which would generate an income stream for the environment agency to then monitor those discharges and check for compliance against the permit by doing that you would generate an industry around the treatment of Highway runoff and most of the manufacturers and designers are British
So it would help the British manufacturing sector if you selected and purchased and installed some of their devices so that would again generate income through tax revenue and I think ultimately you’d have to add either an element of of cost to car tax or to fuel
Duty to create a fund to deliver more treatment schemes and the more we do the better we’ll get at it the quicker we’ll get at it the cheaper we will get at it and therefore it’ll it’ll self-generate it a sort of rolling program of delivery there are some really good examples of
Treatment schemes on new build roads uh particularly with local authorities in Cheshire and laner so it can be done and we need to stop saying we can’t do it and we won’t do it and we need to start saying how can we do it and get on with
It and then one day maybe this murky Brown pool will again turn into a beautiful running stream I hope so I I hope so and it’s not beyond the wit of man to take this discharge pipe move it somewhere else treat it and let this stream return to its little Babbling Brook
Status on my way back to the train station Joe drove me on one of the brand new smart motorways it’s difficult to calculate the total the government is spend on upgrading the highway Network so far but it’s committed to £900 million to improve safety with all the
Money for upgrades I wanted to know if they’re also investing in some Highway pollution treatment yeah so this is the m6 near Junction 22 and it’s the smart Motorway program so they are upgrading this stretch of the m6 into a smart Motorway so all four lanes will become
Running Lanes so there will be no hard shoulder and they have eradicated the grass section in the central reservation and replaced it with concrete surface and a vertical concrete barrier and then they’ve put concrete slip form drainage channels along the motorway length the problem with that is that they have
Increased the surface area of the motorway the impermeable surface area of the motorway by getting rid of the grass in the central reservation and potentially extending the width of the motorway and putting in the emergency Refuge areas but they haven’t introduced any treatment systems for that pollution
So there was already a problem with pollution from this mway surface going into the local water environment and now they’ve made it worse and they still haven’t done anything about treating the runoff into the water environment so it’s a this is a multi-million pound investment in upgrading the motorway and
Yet they haven’t up upgraded the drainage infrastructure from a pollution point of view at all well I don’t know what you think Nikki but I think that’s quite a damning testimony and I think it’s pretty amazing that those sites that so long seem to have been ignored all these
Outfalls or if not ignored then they’re certainly not being maintained and that you know even chalk streams are being affected and none of England’s rivers meet legal standards for chemical quality and looking at this it’s really not that surprising yeah I think what I was struck by I think really is that it
Feels like it’s flown under the radar and we hear a lot about pollution from sewage in water courses I mean that’s all over the Press isn’t it now you can have a conversation with anybody as soon as they know that you’re involved in water that’s the thing they want to talk
About I think agriculture is certainly on the radar but it certainly feels to me that highways is something that we don’t hear as much about and absolutely as you said from what Joe described I mean it sounded awful doesn’t it I think you know objectively awful so really
Helpful to hear from Joe about kind of the environmental impact that we’re seeing so I shared Joe’s interview with Steven elderkin Steven is the director of environmental sustainability at National highways and National highways look after 3% of the road network but a huge percentage of the traffic that
Travels on those roads so let’s hear from Steve Steve welcome to planet possible it’s lovely to have you with us thanks for inviting me Nikki great to be here so we just heard the interview from Joe Bradley give us your initial Reflections on what you heard I come
Away from it really feeling how important the management of Road runoff and pollution of water is and just how passionately people feel about the impact that that pollution has on the water environment and and the health of our ecosystems I thought it was a really interesting piece yeah there’s
Definitely plenty of passion around the topic and I think it’s great that we’re hearing it now increasingly in mainstream media and that there’s a spotlight being shown on it really and we know from looking at environment agency data that around 18% of water quality failures in England are coming
From Urban and diffuse pollution which includes Highway runoff alongside then Agriculture and sewage so give us a bit of a feel from a a national highways perspective about what you know about what’s in that runoff things like microplastics what level of of understanding have you got so we undertook a 13-year research program
With the environment agency between 19 1997 and 2010 and we did some extensive monitoring across the country and looked at what were the pollutants coming out of the end of our outfalls and soakaways and it’s a mixture of polyaromatic hydrocarbons heavy metals and other toxic substances more recently we’ve
Been concerned that there also is growing interest around microplastics and the particles from tires we’ve already run two phases of research and we’ got a third phase about to go live again working with the environment agency monitoring microplastic pollution so that we can better understand the chemicals that are coming off our roads
And Joe talked about whether the runoff from highways generally should be permitted has National highways got a view on whether that’s the right direction of travel we would really like to see the resources that that we’ve got spent on improving water quality and there is a risk with an extensive
Permitting regime so we’ve got 18,000 outfalls and soakaways the administrative costs of Permitting all of those would be would be very high indeed and actually perhaps those resources would be better placed improving the management of the water and reducing the pollution going into the water courses it’s a matter for defa
And the environment agency what the permitting regime is at the moment we have a a right to discharge but we have no right to pollute and so it’s for us to own that respons ibility and manage the impact of our road runoff on the receiving water bodies there is an
Administrative burden we see that certainly with my water sector hat on there’s a huge amount of effort that goes into permits but also there’s a visibility that that then gives isn’t there and it also generates the revenue to then fund the regulator to do more so
I think you can you can see it from both perspectives I hear what you’re saying but I also hear from a from Joe’s perspective that needing to know what’s in those discharge points and the impact that that’s having on the environment is important too so Joe talked about the
Risk assessment tool and and you talked about that briefly tell us a little bit more about how that works really and how that’s then leading into your plan moving forward what you going to do the risk assessment tool was built off the back of that 13-year monitoring program
That I mentioned previously it takes some parameters for a particular outall the size of the catchment area the nature of the treatment if there is any at the end of the the pipe and the characteristics of the receiving water body and then it assesses the risk that the road runoff will exceed or
Compromise good water quality it’s grounded in all that empirical work and all that monitoring and it allows us to look at the network and prioritize those outfalls where we think the risk is elevated is that a tool that is fairly static or is it something that you’re continually improving and updating as
You get more and more data as to what is going on out in your network so the microplastics research that we’re doing now will give us more information and that will be used to improve the tool if there findings from that that they’re useful we’ll refine it we’re
Really open to new information have we got evidence that the characteristics are different we haven’t had the risk assessment right in the past will revisit so the judgment is not static and one of the things we’re doing at the moment is running the assessment rerunning the assessment for over 12200
Outfalls across our Network where we we think there might be a high risk there are still locations which we are having pointed out to us that that aren’t in our database and of course we’ll incorporate those and run a risk assessment and consider evidence of pollution where where it comes
Up our 2024 season of planet possible is supported by one of the leading engineering and design consultancies in the world at kins realis here at planet possible we bring a diverse range of voices from across the International water and environment sector to explore how to tackle some of the biggest
Challenges we face and that aligns perfectly with the Atkins realist purpose of engineering a better future for our planet and its people we’re really grateful to Atkins realis for enabling us to bring another exciting year of planet possible to you I it sounds like there’s there’s
Some good work going on to improve it sounds like you’re really open which is brilliant to new information tell us a little bit more about what the plan does look like because I I know that National highways work on a 5-year investment cycle very similar to the water sector
In fact so I guess you’re coming towards the end of one of those and looking ahead to the next one so what what does that look like when we think about water quality where does it sort of sit in your priority list this plan came out of an environment audit committee meeting
In 2021 our chief executive gave evidence and in 2022 recommendations were made that we did more and that we addressed all the high-risk outfalls across our Network by 2030 so this is a scaling up of the program we’ve been doing some good things like Stover Park
In Devon where we we’ve had some great improvements in in biodiversity and ecosystems as a result of a flagship scheme but it’s been fractions of the work that actually needed to be done and so I think we now have the Mandate the recommendation from the EAC the plan is
To address all our high- Risk outfalls by by 2030 and so what does that look like we need to verify where those high-risk outfalls are and then we need to design the solutions we need to get the planning and permission in place and then we need to deliver those Solutions
And for a typical location once we’ve decided it’s high risk and it needs some work and upgrading then that’s a 2 to threee process to to the point where where the mitigation is delivered for some it will be more complex so you need to buy land issues around permissions
And then you might be looking at a couple of years longer before the scheme is delivered so for us at the moment the plan looks like a huge amount what work but it won’t emerge yet as more delivery on the ground so we are going through as
Fast as we can the locations that we’ve identified that could be high risk um our plan that we published last May said that we would uh we would complete that verification process by March 25 I actually confident that we will get through that by this summer so we’re
Running as fast as we can on that process we’re currently appointing a technical partner to increase our capacity to design and to do some Assurance work for us on the work that we’ve done around the verification and I’m expecting that we will have design work underway for at least 100 of the
Locations around the network by the end of March 25 I keep talking about March 25 because that’s the end of our current fiveyear funding cycle and then we’re into the next five-year funding cycle and I’m bidding there for the money to build the mitigation solutions for what
We think is going to be about 250 locations across the network I’m confident that everyone involved in the next 5ye investment plan under understands the importance of water quality and that the Our obligation to not pollute and the recommendation that was accepted from the environmental audit committee so I’m very optimistic
That we will have the funding in that next fiveyear funding settlement to deliver the mitigations so at the moment we’re really ramping up the program ready to have a a scale up of delivery in that next 5year settlement I I guess the other thing that I would mention is
This is largely an issue of our aging and existing assets so we updated our standards for constructing New Roads back in 2010 that was also informed by the risk tool and all the monitoring that we’ve done and I think we are confident that new build schemes are appropriately mitigating the risk of
Water pollution from Road runoff and as we have some further new enhancement projects going through onto site they will in the process of building the new schemes address some historic high-risk outfalls there’s a scheme in Essex the a12 Chelmsford to a120 scheme it got its planning permission in January when that
Goes on site we think that will mitigate 30 high-risk outfalls along the length of that section so quite a significant contribution to the 250 will come from some of the enhancement schemes that we’ve we’ve got coming but we’re really setting ourselves up to have this production process to systematically
Deliver the improvements where we’ve identified a high risk of of pollution I mean what you’re about is building roads fundamentally and so I’m wondering culturally how is the environment being handled within the organization are you want a bit of a journey here I guess really is water new to you guys thinking
About that and is it a priority for you guys yet actually we’re not about building roads so our purpose is to connect the country you know if you look at what the definition of sustainable development is from the bruntland commission it’s meeting the needs of today without compromising the ability
Of future generations to meet their needs and meeting the needs of today actually roads are utterly vital for a prosperous country and we have nine times as much Freight traveling by Road as by rail this is how you get your Essentials your baked beans and your L
Rolls it comes on the road 4 million Journeys a day is how you go on holiday the flexibility of the journeys that roads allow cannot be matched so there’s some things that roads do really well and are vital for the country and sustainable development means Meeting those needs as well as thinking about
The environmental Legacy that we’re leaving we published our environmental sustainability strategy back in May last year and the strap line was a connected country a thriving environment and I think that’s again trying to get that point of we can’t turn off the roads we need to continue need to connect the
Country but we need to think about that environmental Legacy I’ve been in this role for about two years and it’s the first time the company has had a director level post related to the environment and that reflects the fact that it has become more Central to us as
A as a company there’s S three big areas really there’s making the transition to Net Zero highways there’s being positive for nature and there’s tackling local Environmental pollution ever reducing it uh for the benefit of communities I don’t know I had a session an hour and a
Half with the top 70 people in National highways last week and got them to think about why the environment matters why does it matter to them why does it matter to the company great to have them all sat there thinking about the why why why does environment matter and there
Was a huge amount of passion and engagement in the room and I think people connect with with this because they’ve got kids because they worry about the future they’re seeing the headlines around climate change we’re a bunch of people that care to and we want to be part of something positive it’s
Also important for the license to operate for the company so we’re not going to get investment if we are not part of contributing positively to objectives around the environment so I’m confident that board exec senior leaders throughout the company there is a real passion for for Transforming Our environmental sustainability it’s
Nationally significant you know a lot of greenhouse gases come from roads there is air pollution noise pollution water pollution we own a lot of land 30,000 hectares the size of the aisle of white and the opportunity for us to have a positive impact on the environment is
Enormous I think I mean it sounds like it’s one of your three pillars local environmental pollution well that’s great to hear and it sounds like there’s a commitment absolutely to doing more is it f enough do you think so I can understand the frustration looking at progress there
Isn’t a huge amount of delivery in the next 12 months or so and bear with us we need to ramp this program up and if we’re going to systematically deliver the recommendation of addressing all our high-risk outfalls we need to establish the program we need to do the design
Work we need to get the permissions build the capacity in our supply chain to deliver it we are going to get there and we will get there by 2030 I point to the fact that we’re running ahead on the verification compared to where we said
We would be bear with us delivery at the other end will come uh and I know uh it can feel to some that there’s not enough on the ground happening but but it will it will emerge in the in the early years of the next fiveyear funding settlement
I mean there’s so many similarities from what I hear from you stepen what I’m experiencing in the water sector in certainly in England and many of our listeners will work in the water sector work in the environment space work in the agriculture it’s those three isn’t
It it’s Agri it’s water sector and it’s highways that are contributing to the impact on our water courses are there opportunities for more collaboration between those three sectors do you think to solve some of these really big water quality challenges I think absolutely particularly in the biodiversity space
And the flood management space we ran a pilot for nature-based flood Management in a couple of catchment areas and we’re just going through the evaluation of that but we had great engagement from local land owners and farmers who planted trees and dug ditches and put in
Leaky dams and ponds and that sort of slows the flow of water onto our Network that’s good for safety but it’s also good for stress on the on the drainage asset and instead of hard engineering to achieve that you’ve got something that also stores carbon and is good for
Biodiversity and we’re still at the early stages of the evaluation everything I’ve seen is really positive and I’m I’m Keen to see that scale up as well in the next 5 years we’ve got a commitment to plant 3 million trees finding adjacent land ownings that are Keen to plant Woodland that again helps
Us with with flood management and also carbon storage and meeting our three million tree commitment so yeah I think there’s lots of potential to work together never thought about safety so really of course it’s really obvious yeah slowing the flow water means you’re not getting run off all over your all
Over your roads at the same time but also good forwards quality lots of co- benefits I think really so a final question for you Steve Before I Let You Go and I ask all my guests this so we have the planet possible magic wand I’m
Going to pass it across to you if you could make anything possible in this space go as as big and bold or as specific as you want what would you make possible first best is to address this pollution at source can we have some wonderful new tire compounds that don’t
Break up can we hasten the move to electric vehicles and the reduction of the hydrocarbons that are used in our vehicles might even wave it and say could we have a wonderful it app that meant ride sharing was easier and therefore reduce the number of vehicles
On our Network that would help me on my carbon targets as well so what can we do to reduce this at source meanwhile we’ll get on and do the stuff that we need to do at the other end of the pipe Source control that’s a good one it’s a big one
To cover Steve thank you so much for making the time to talk to us really enjoyed our conversation real pleasure thanks for your time so Rachel I’m not sure your Reflections but certainly one of the things that I took away from listening to Steve was this question of
Whether we should be doing more monitoring and the role that permitting has to play or or doesn’t as the case may be at the moment and I definitely heard what Steve said about wanting to spend that money that would be an administrative burden improving assets
But I’m also torn by the fact that if you don’t Monitor and you don’t regulate arguably a how do you fund a regulator that’s got teeth and also how do you know how much of the problem you’re actually you’re solving so I was left feeling like I really want to hear a bit
More about monitoring and kind of regulation in that space yeah I agree with that and I’d also question whether National highways is really going as fast as it can I think only a handful of their assets are going to be addressed this year and there’s some doubt over
The actual number of outfalls that they have anyway so there’s a massive amount of work ahead of them which really needs to be expedited if they’re ever going to get uh you know any Improvement in place and we’re going to improve our Rivers yeah Steve definitely said bear with us
I understand that on a practical point point but it’s really hard to hear as well isn’t it when you think back to that interview that we had with Joe at the beginning so we’ve heard about the environmental impact from Joe we’ve heard about the current plans from National highways from Steve the asset
Owner that was really helpful but there is another really important voice to bring into this conversation and that’s the voice of the regulator and so both Rachel and I were delighted to be joined by Helen wake and Helen is the director of water for the environment agency which is the Environmental regulator
Here in England so let’s hear what Helen had to say welcome Helen to this special episode of planet possible and water shed investigations it’s great to have you with us it’s lovely to be here I am so happy to be talking about something different on water quality I spend most
Of my life working on sewage and I know the fact that somebody wants to talk about Urban and transport issues is brilliant really pleased to be here great well let’s get started really give us a bit of a feel for the relationship between the environment agency and National highways and the kind of
Responsibilities between your two organizations well the environment agency is the Environmental regulator we’ve got lots of UH responsibilities for environmental regulation as you know we also understand the water environment so we’ve got a a science and evidence function and we monitor the water environment so all sorts of reasons why
We’d want to talk to National highways National highways are responsible for their road outfalls now it they’re in an interesting position because they own I think it’s something like 3% of the road Network but most of the traffic and I think some 17 or 18,000 Road outfalls discharge into the
Water environment so there’s quite a lot of reason for them to think about water as well the principal route by which we talk to National highways is through the road investment strategy which is just coming up to its third cycle and that’s the opportunity for National highways to
Invest in water quality and the impact of their outfalls and and that’s the conversation that we have with them I guess the other thing to say is that at a local level we do talk to National highways and and the other highways authorities who I think there’re about
100 about local issues so there’s lots of touch points between us and transport yeah as well as that kind of regulatory fiveyear cycle so when I think about water quality in the round my brain splits things into three really you know we’ve got agriculture we’ve got kind of
The water sector and then we’ve got this Urban and diffused pollution transport and it it’ be really interesting to understand from an environment agency perspective are your levels of resources split a third a third a third is is Highway something that’s as much a focus you know how does that work no they’re
Not it’s a really it’s a cracking question so we are funded through water quality charges for a lot of work that we do on water quality those charges come about 80% from the water industry and about 20% from other permit holders so that piece of work is resourced and
And and you may be aware that we’re Consulting at the moment on increasing our water quality permit charges which will is really important for us because that will help us to build our regulatory capacity particularly with the water industry for agriculture we get a government grant and that drives a
Degree of Regulation and advice for farmers and we work also with natural England on giving advice to Farmers the work we do in the urban environment is not funded and so we use a certain amount of national resource to talk to National highways so I choose to do that
To make sure that we can input to the road investment strategy and then at a local level what happens is we work in Partnerships so the catchment based approach has got 107 catchment Partnerships many of those operate in urban environments and they’re where we bring together the water utilities National highways local
Authorities local environmental Charities to enable us to pool resource if you like to work in an urban environment and some of that goes into roads hi Helen I just as we’re talking about resources I saw that the environment agency chair Alan leville announced that the agenc is going to
Take on about 500 extra new people to increase regulation of the water industry and said it’s going to look at making like 4,000 more more inspections and 11,000 the year after and it’s going to restore the position to something like the EA was 10 to 15 years ago those
Are his words I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more about that is that all going to focus on the the water industry or will it move over to agriculture as well and you said it’s not funded for urban and Road but would
There be an improvement as a result of that it’d be really interesting to hear a bit more about them and whether they would have enforcement Powers as well brilliant Lots there’s lots of questions in there so it’s it’s it’s a really exciting week I think for wter Quality
So the chairman Alan LEL was speaking at the national Farmers Union conference so he was talking about what we’re investing in uh agriculture so over the course of this financial year there’ll be more than 4,000 inspections of farms and we know that when we visit Farms we
Find problems but where we we find those problems they are addressed so that’s a really big boost to water quality on the water industry side we’re Consulting an increase in our charges if that charge consultation goes to plan that means we’ll have 500 more people over the next
Few years working on principally water industry regulation that will be 4,000 inspections next financial year and then as you say building up to 10,000 and it’s not just boots on the ground it will also be huge investment in our digital capability and capacity which will enable us to make sure that the
Work that we do and the regulatory work we do directed into the right place now the way the charges work they are for our assessment permitting and our assessment of compliance so it only takes us to the point if something goes wrong we can’t use that resource to
Enforce but we’re also expecting more money from government to enable us to enforce where we need to but actually the purpose of Regulation is to stop something going wrong in the first place and I think that level of oversight will enable us to do that and then your sub
Question was about well will this help us in the urban environment and yes it will because there’s there’s so much happening at the moment which will help so water companies now are obliged to produce drainage and Wastewater management plans and they helpers they help the water industry to understand
What is going on in drainage networks in their patch our contribution to that work can be funded through charges and that will enable us to get a better understanding of what’s going on in the urban environment so does that mean a big slug of cash for us to work on
Transport issues no but does it help us to better understand the water environment does it help us to contribute to those catchment Partnerships yes it does so yeah it’s really good news at World Water Tech conference I made exactly the point that you’ve raised Nikki this is not all
About the water industry there’s that balance between what agriculture contributes to the problem what’s coming from Urban environments and what’s coming from the water industry and getting that back into the public Consciousness and the political Consciousness I think is really important and do you have a feel for
What proportion of that money might be spent on Frontline roles as opposed to sort of that in-house digital work that you were talking about it’ll change over time to bring in 500 new people takes a while as we bring people into our local teams to do the front line work will
Also be investing in our digital so for the next couple of years you will see more investment in digital and resources gradually then transfer to the the front line when we built those digital tools so it will be really Dynamic and what we want to see is the water industry
Responding and complying with environmental law and as that happens again the balance between what what we want our people to be doing will change it would be great wouldn’t it to get to a place where we’re working in a collaborative space and properly improving the water environment rather
Than checking for compliance all the time so to an extent the way the environment agency looks will be driven by the water industry’s response to our regulation and just s back to the highways again it be interesting to know how much the environment agency knows about National highways 18,000 Plus
Outfalls in soakaways they appear to have been largely ignored by national highways in terms of Maintenance at least so what kind of information does the environment agency hold on them and the pollution issue that they present well we don’t Monitor Road outfalls routinely because we’re not funded to do
It and actually if you take the 17 or 18,000 that National highways have and then think about the number that other highways authorities have we’re into hundreds and thousands of outfalls so do we monitor outfalls specifically no do we pick up the sort of substances that might arise from Road outfalls in our
National monitoring program yes we do so we understand that the road network has an impact on the water environment and as we say you know it’s about 18% for urban and transport issues which is actually increasing we the last the last time we looked in 2015 it was only about
11% so you can see that as issues in the water industry are tackled and there has been significant impact in the water industry but as population increases Etc you can see that impact in the urban environment growing and that matters doesn’t it because that’s where most of
Us live there is a t tendy for the loudest voices in the water environment to be talking about very lovely places and be talking the why and windir and actually where most people live and the local environment that most impacts them is the local Urban one so I do think
That that understanding that Urban issues have an impact both on the environment and on people’s lives is really important so wers share did some work last year that was publishing the guardian just mapping all the outfalls and showing that a lot of these discharge into protected areas you trip
Siis and some even flowing into some of these chalk streams and doesn’t that undermine a little bit the work that you’re trying to do in improving rivers and also environmental designations that are put there to protect these areas well what we would expect is that National highways in their work would
Start to focus on areas of the greatest risk so we know that they’ve got a risk management tool which is enabling them to focus on I think they planning for 250 high risk outfalls and we would expect that that risk assessment took those designations into account to be
Honest with you we don’t know exactly what’s in that risk assessment and it’s it’s a question that we want to ask National highways about how they’re doing that my sense is that they’ve made a commitment to 250 in response to the environmental audit committee it’s great it’s brilliant to see that Focus because
We haven’t had it before but I would expect them I would want to see them going further and faster particularly to protect those special places Rachel I guess really and last couple for me I I’m really interested in what next really and that was something that we
Put to Steve as well from highways have you got a sense of what the future could look like in terms of management of this this kind of transport and urban pollution and I might even be so cheeky as to offer you the planet possible magic wand that I quite often offer to
Guest and sort of say you know if you’d like to give it a wave what what do you think’s coming and what and also what would you like to see really from this sort of Highways runoff perspective the problem is I think with water quality and I’m looking at you Nikki I’m looking
At you rich and what you write about you need more than three wishes with your magic one don’t you for water quality because the issues are so complex and they’re so multidisciplinary there’s a few things for me from a national highways perspective really showing that leadership for all highways authorities
So having said that there might be 100,000 outfalls out there which have a greater or lesser impact on the environment we need to tackle more than 250 so what does that asset creation that mitigation that asset maintenance look like for all highways so I would
Like to see that I would really like to see more focus on Source control because often that highway is it’s a vector for pollution coming from somewhere else and as with every everything to do with pollution what’s the source of this pollution so is there something to do
With Road design vehicle and tire design that starts to stop these pollutants actually hitting the outfall in the first place I spend nearly all of my life talking about end of pipe and that’s not where the problem arises so so what do we do about that and I think
Then what about those other Urban sources I think we talk about combined drainage systems and storm overflows and we talk about separating rain water from Storm drainage what we’re talking about here in terms of highway outfalls is separated drainage we absolutely need to tackle at source we can’t just assume
That separating our drains is a Panacea and then I guess my final one is that is that partnership that Caba partnership Caba have done a brilliant piece of work they’ve done a sort of working manual for catchment Partnerships in urban areas which explain how to work in Partnership and how to bring different
Interests together in an urban area to improve WS quality so I’d like to see a lot more of that and communities my magic wand I think is communities feeling that they’ve got their own traction and they can get involved in water quality locally I just wanted to
Ask Helen cuz you were saying that there’s no money for sort of um looking after these highways because they’re permitted and therefore they haven’t got the income for that do you think that they should be permitted I was talking to a lawyer a while ago who was saying
That the EA actually got the power to bring highways drains and discharges under environmental permitting if they involve discharge into freshwaters that might be poisonous noxious or polluting I think that’s the that’s the wording and they’re saying that that looks to be the case so why hasn’t the agency made
That move with the agency and so do you think generally they could be or should be permitted so we do have the power so could they be yes they could but we’ve already described National highways alone having 18,000 of these things so where I would go to step back
From what the purpose of Permitting is to enable the control of pollution and actually if we permit something which is a passive system we create the bureaucracy of permitting but without actually investing in the solution and if we think about the cost of Permitting and it’s public money
Isn’t it you know regardless of it coming via National highways it’s public money I’d much rather that public money was invested straight into solution and mitigating the problem so yes we could but I don’t think we should because I don’t think it’s the most efficient and
Effective way to get the control that we want and the other thing you said was about um not fully knowing how National highways put together their risk assessments for these outfalls which I thought was quite surprising should that be something that they’re collaborating with you on that they could Consulting
On with you cuz you’re being the experts in the area yeah it’d be great to see their risk assessment tool in more detail but as I said essentially within the environment agency this is unfunded work so what we want is for National highways to get on with it we don’t want
To be in a position where we have to show them how to do it if you like they’re responsible for their outfalls thank you so much right well I think we’ve we’ve covered everything we want to which is brilliant Helen thank you for taking the time to talk to us and
And being so clear really about what what the situation is is and what the future is and I’m nodding vigorously with your three wishes with the magic wand as well really so great to have you on both this planet possible and Watershed investigation special and it’s
Lovely to see you both thank you it was great to be able to put some of those questions to Helen but I’m not 100% convinced that there’s going to be significant Improvement without some form of Permitting or other kind of regulatory oversight and accountability in place looking at the outfalls
Permitting would also raise money for the environment agency which has got to help it on on a lot of so I don’t know if I’m convinced by the arguments but it is good to hear that there is more resource going to the agency and that the two will work together yeah and I
Think thinking positively actually about what we did hear from Helen there was a huge amount of passion and enthusiasm and positivity from Helen about the fact that this topic is now getting the air time that I think she feels like it deserves which is useful I agree with
You your points around funding a regulator that can then be effective is really important I was really pleased to hear Steve from National highways talking about the opportunities to work across some of the silos you know we talk about agriculture the water sector and highways being the three major
Contributors to water quality and poor water quality in some cases actually looking for opportunities to do more collaboratively feels like the right direction of travel so it’s great to hear that National highways really see water as a priority in a way that perhaps historically it hasn’t been so
Some chinks of positivity in their nature but at the same time there’s a lot to do is what it feels like so I think that’s probably it for us isn’t it we’ve covered a lot of ground today hopefully you’ve enjoyed listening to this collaboration between planet possible and Watershed that’s it
For now from planet possible stay safe and we’ll see you next time and from Watershed investigations thank you very much for Listening