In recent months, the letters pages have seen many residents share their views, experiences and their anger about pollution in our waterways and the Usk and Wye in particular. Many in politics love to have a bogeyman and a target for their anger, so too often this debate gets reduced to who supports dumping sewage in rivers and who doesn’t, but like many complex problems, the reality is a lot more nuanced.

No one of any political party supports sewage being dumped in rivers. All political parties support action to reduce levels of sewage but naturally there are disagreements about how it can be achieved, how quickly – and who’s going to pay for it.

The Wye straddles both Wales and England so needs joined up solutions, but the river Usk is wholly within Wales meaning that the Welsh Government and its environmental regulator Natural Resources Wales are responsible for it. It does feel a bit hypocritical that many Labour MPs are criticising the Conservative UK Government for not voting to eliminate storm overflows, when the Labour Welsh Government is actually refusing to do the same here.

The Minister recently said: “Storm overflows provide a controlled point of relief at times of heavy rainfall. They perform a crucial role in reducing the risk of sewers flooding homes and public spaces, preventing sewage from flooding homes and businesses. Removing all existing storm overflows would be a long-term multi-billion pound carbon intensive project and would not be the most effective way of improving water quality or be resilient to the increasing pressures from climate change.”

It’s clear that change is going to take massive investment and is not going to happen overnight. Welsh Water is making a £10million investment in the river Usk to improve the situation this autumn but the fact remains that we have a Victorian sewerage network with combined pipes for sewerage and rainfall and separating the two is costly.

Posing an even more serious threat to the wildlife and biodiversity of our rivers are phosphate levels, but the impact of storm overflows on phosphate levels is actually quite low.

There are steps that water companies, governments and even councils can take to improve water quality. When Monmouthshire was led by Conservative councillors we declared a water quality emergency and committed the council to develop a strategy to improve our waterways. But these are complex problems and what we need is for everyone to work together and not reduce the debate to the lowest common denominator.

Richard John

County Councillor for Mitchel Troy and Trellech United

Conservative Group Leader