South West Water
Revision as of 10:36, 25 October 2009 by Claire Robinson (talk | contribs)
South West Water is a company that as of October 2009 supplies water in Devon and Cornwall and parts of Dorset and Somerset. It came into being in 1989 with the privatisation of the water industry.[1]
History
South West Water has repeatedly been named as one of the major polluters of rivers. According to an article in The Sunday Times in October 2009:
- Water companies have been prosecuted 342 times in the past five years. The worst offender was South West Water which was prosecuted for 42 pollution offences.[2]
Fines for polluting rivers are small. According to the Environment Agency, the average fine for each breach was just £4,411. This is a tiny fraction of water companies' profits. As South West Water has a monopoly on water supply in most of the UK's West Country, it can charge consumers extraordinarily high prices.
Notes
- ↑ About Us, South West Water website, accessed 25 October 2009
- ↑ Fines fail to stop river polluters, Sunday Times, 18 October 2009, accessed 25 Oct 2009
