The Liberal Democrats have put landfill elimination at the heart of their campaign, with party leader Ed Davey planning to start their race at the River Wandle in Wimbledon on Wednesday. It calls for a tax on sewage companies to finance the cleaning of local rivers, which can see the waste being discharged into the environment when there is heavy rainfall. The Tories have come under enormous public pressure over the issue since the government rejected a House of Lords amendment to impose a legal duty on water companies to phase out river dumping last fall. However, as an indication of how controversial the issue has become, some Tory campaign material on social media misled the Liberal Democrats that they “voted against the legal duty of cleaning rivers.” Lib Dem lawmakers opposed the government’s plans in favor of stronger legal duties backed by opposition parties. A Liberal Democrat source said: “Conservative MPs are clearly afraid of the huge public backlash over sewage. “Their desperate new tactics on social media just won’t stop it.” The Lib Dems said internal polls commissioned by the party suggest that sewage disposal is one of the top issues that could persuade traditional Conservative voters to stop voting for the party. Another poll by the party found that 36% of UK voters said they would be less likely to vote for a lawmaker who did not support a ban on sewage dumped in rivers, bringing it to 41% of those who voted Conservative in 2019 . Starting the campaign, Davey said: “Conservative MPs have voted from time to time to allow water companies to continue pumping their sewage directly into our rivers. Rivers like the Wandle at Wimbledon, which now has the worst possible ecological rating. Meanwhile, the bosses of the water companies pocket millions of pounds in bonuses. All this must change. “Every vote for the Liberal Democrats counts. It sends a message to the Conservatives that they can not continue to fail in our NHS. “They can not continue to hit families with unfair tax increases and they can not continue to pump sewage into our rivers.” A Conservative spokesman has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating “Similar, baseless allegations concerning Libya Dems have been made more than once. “Lib Dem’s claims about sewage are even less credible than the bar graphs in their leaflets,” the spokesman said. “While we are taking practical steps to address the problem, Lib Dem’s plans would not have stopped sewage discharge and could have cost each household ρες over .000 25,000.” In fact, opposition parties, including Labor and the Liberal Democrats, voted last October in a House of Lords amendment to the environmental bill that would give water companies a legal obligation not to pump raw waste from their waste. Toris. Members. It would have introduced a requirement for sewer companies to “take all reasonable steps to ensure that raw wastewater is not discharged by storm overflows” and “demonstrate improvements in sewer systems”. The government claimed that its own version of the amendment was strong enough, with a promise to reduce the number of “storm outflows” and to win 22 would-be Tory rebels. The ministers said their plan “represents a significant improvement in the status quo” and argued that “the complete elimination of sewage discharges through storm surges in England, which many are calling for, is likely to cost between 350 350 and δι 600 billion.” . In 2020, water utilities discharged raw sewage into rivers more than 400,000 times in a total of 3.1 million hours. The release of raw sewage through storm surges is legal in exceptional cases such as extreme rain, but evidence shows that in many cases such discharges are more frequent.
