Transport Insights

Thames Water has joined Richmond Council in refusing to say where road runoff goes next from a gully into which a resident famously poured a small amount of coffee, raising concerns that toxic pollution may be flowing unmitigated into the river whose name the company bears.

The highway authority made national headlines when its enforcement officers fined Burcu Yesilyurt £150 for pouring a small amount of coffee down the gully outside Richmond Station, only to rescind the fine on the grounds that she had only committee a minor contravention of Section 33 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

The reality is that, aside from the small amount of a relatively innocuous liquid, whether it was “likely to pollute land or water” would depend on what the gully drains into.

This would either be into the combined sewer system or a surface water only sewer, both likely operated by Thames Water.

If the former, there is no pollution risk; if the latter, the pollution risk would pale into insignificance compared with the risk from other runoff from the road, including oil spills, particulate matter and microplastics from tyre and brake wear.

With Richmond Council refusing to tell me, I asked Thames Water, who also refused to say but didn’t deny that it was its sewer.

This is an astonishing situation where two major organisations, one a public authority and one a private company fulfilling a public function, are refusing to be straight with the public about a matter of significant public concern.

If, as Richmond Council have suggested, the runoff goes into one of “Richmond’s waterways”, the next question would be what, if anything, is done to mitigate the pollution risk along the way.

Jo Bradley of campaign group Stormwater Shepherds told me:

If we don’t know where our highway drains discharge into rivers and streams, we cannot properly assess the risk of pollution from highway runoff in our towns. We know that highway runoff contains elevated levels of toxic metals, hydrocarbons and microplastic tyre-wear particles.

Together, these form a toxic cocktail that causes harm to the fish and tiny creatures that live in rivers. We need to know where the discharge points are so that we can measure and control this pollution.

She argues that while Section 100 of the Highways Act 1980 allows highway authorities like National Highways to discharge surface water into any inland or tidal waters, a discharge of polluting matter into a watercourse would usually require a permit from the Environment Agency (EA) under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2016.

The EA says it doesn’t have specific information about this runoff but says that urban and transport runoff, where surface water picks up pollutants such as litter, petrol, or garden pesticides, pollutes 18% of water bodies.

It adds that that while responsibility for highway outfalls rests with highway and local authorities like Richmond Council it supports Yellow Fish campaigns to raising awareness of what not to put down drains.

A spokesperson said:

While highway outfalls are not directly regulated by the Environment Agency, we continue to work with the government and partner organisations to reduce pollution from our roads.

This includes working closely with National Highways to influence their Road Investment Strategy to include pollution mitigating schemes on their priority list of outfalls and on joint incident response strategies to minimise the risk of pollution arising from road traffic accidents.