Crimes against the Aquatic Environment

Abstract

BACKGROUND The Water Act 1989 provided the legal vehicle for the Government's privatization of the water industry.' The original plan for privatization had been that the ten regional water authorities, which had comprehensive responsibilities for the management of water within their areas, would be sold off into private ownership allowing new private bodies to undertake the same responsibilities as had previously been discharged by public sector bodies. However, this plan for water privatization soon encountered difficulties. A central problem2 was that the former regional water authorities had possessed integrated management functions relating to all aspects of the hydrological cycle,3 as then provided for under the Water Act 1973. Essentially this meant responsibility for water, from the time that it fell upon land to the point when it became part of the sea, was entrusted to the same body. Matters such as water resources, water supply, sewerage and sewage treatment, pollution control, and land drainage were all entrusted to the regional water authority for the area concerned.4 Whilst integrated control allowed for the co-ordinated exercise of water management responsibilities, it also gave rise to certain conflicts of interest within the regional water authorities. Most notably, it had the consequence that the body with responsibility for pollution control also had responsibility for the treatment of sewage, a function which was a serious and persistent cause of river pollution. Hence, the body with the key policing role in relation to the aquatic environment was frequently found to be the most significant criminal in relation to that environment. This state of affairs was less than satisfactory whilst sewage treatment was a public sector activity; it would become quite intolerable if privatization provided a commercial motive for ineffective policing. In a familiar rural metaphor the Secretary of State for the Environment, Mr Ridley, * Director, Centre for Law in Rural Areas, and Senior Lecturer in Law,