Water is essential for all life. Humans need it to drink, wash and bathe, produce food and other products, and to just enjoy. It is also home to millions of different species, mostly in the ocean. It is free, literally ‘just falling out of the sky’. However, free, clean water is not something we can take for granted.
In the UK, and elsewhere, people are forced to pay for water. Water bills increase every year as companies make huge profits. The regulator OFWAT has said that bills will increase by 36% over the next five years. This is to pay for years of underinvestment by the profit-driven companies.
These profits are particularly obscene because of the current state of our lakes, rivers, and seas. There has been large-scale dumping of faeces into rivers and sea by the privatised water companies (still called ‘spillages’ by the media and government) and large scale leaks. Water is also polluted by run off from fertilisers, pesticides, and animal waste from industrial farming, with increasing numbers of huge battery hen and cattle factory farms a particular problem. Anti-biotics from farming and toxic industrial chemicals also leak into water with health effects on people, damaging and killing nature generally.
Pollution in seas and rivers makes many places unsafe for humans to enter. Popular beaches have had to declare ‘no bathing’ alert. Exmouth had to close its beaches to bathing for several days at the height of the tourist season in August 2024. The impact on other species is also devastating. Pollution from sewage dumping and leakage and run-offs from agriculture and roads has a negative impact on aquatic plants, fish and birds, disrupting whole ecosystems.
Facts and Figures
· 584,001 discharges of raw sewage into UK waterways in 2023 alone.
· Of the 86% of inland water bodies which fail to meet targets in England, 36% have been identified as failing directly as a result of sewage and wastewater discharges.
· This year alone, over 18,000 real-time sewage alerts and pollution risk forecasts for the UK have been reported.
· 75% of UK rivers pose a serious risk to human health.
· 590 reports of sickness after bathing linked with a sewage discharge in the area.
· In the 2021/22 financial year, water companies paid out a total of £965 million in shareholder dividends (SAS Water Quality Report).
· Since 2018/2019 water companies have made £4.2 billion in pre-tax profits.
· Water company CEOs took home an eyewatering £16.5 million in the 2021/22 financial year.
Ban the Bailouts
Meanwhile, the government has proposed legislation that will effectively make the taxpayer ie the working class, pay for the mistakes of the privatised companies, ensuring that their profits, and shareholder dividends, don’t suffer. The Bill essentially is bailing out the companies using money from taxpayers and water bill payers ie the working class. In addition, it confirms the regulator Ofwat’s primary role as ensuring the water companies make a profit for shareholders. Surfers against Sewage, and other water campaigners, are demanding significant changes to the Bill. Meanwhile, it has been revealed that Ofwat fined water companies only £2 pounds since 2021, despite serious failures in protecting our water.
It’s not drought, it’s looting
Another issue with the profit-driven water system is the appropriation of water resources by multinational companies. Spain is experiencing extreme weather, the result of the climate crisis. In Valencia exper4ienced catastrophic floods killed over 200 people in October 2024 but this amount of rainful did nothing to help the normal situation: drought and water shortages. However, multinationals such as Nestle and Coca Cola are making huge profits by extracting millions of litres of water from the very land that is suffering from drought – and then selling it back to locals whose water supply has largely disappeared. “It’s a cheek – the companies are extracting the water from under our feet, and selling it back to us” says local Rosita Roser. Water is also depleted by farmers growing water hungry cash crops such as salads for export as well as by the demand for water from golf courses for tourists. This has led people to organise protest movements in Spain and other parts of the world, using the slogan: ‘It’s not drought, it’s looting’.
In the UK the Environment Agency warns that England will run short of water in 25 years unless steps are taken. Wales will suffer more droughts and Scotland faces water scarcity in summer. All while the same multinationals take billions of litres a year of the best drinking water from national resources.
The United Nations special rapporteur for water, Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, has seen water conflicts increase across the world. He says, “The commodification of drinking water is immoral” and selling bottled water “is privatising a vital necessity that we all need to live. It’s like bottling fresh air.” Advocating the immediate banning of water in plastic bottles “which are an environmental disaster”, he says, we should take a “human rights-based approach” to water distribution. Governments must prioritise the provision of drinking water to the population, above any private interest, and plan ahead for droughts and other emergencies.
Anarchist communists would agree that water is a human right and should be free. However, we do not believe that it should be nationalised, as governments, who seem to consider the interests of business more than what is needed by us, the working class. Instead, it should be socialised, under worker and community control.
Resources and Action
Surfers against Sewage: https://www.sas.org.uk/ https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240704-the-wetlands-cleaning-up-the-uks-sewage-pollution https://www.leighday.co.uk/our-services/group-claims/exmouth-sewage-pollution-claim/#:~:text=According%20to%20both%20South%20West%20Water’s%20WaterFit%20website%20and%20the,Beach%20and%20the%20surrounding%20area.
https://news.sky.com/story/anger-as-sewage-leak-sparks-dont-swim-alert-at-exmouth-beach-13199007