Questions

The first version of this site made demands, and put the blame on one party. It turned out some of the claims behind them were wrong, so these are questions instead, each with the evidence we have and what a good answer would look like. Every number links to its source or its working.

1. Which storm overflows are being fixed, and when?

For Welsh Water, Ofwat and Natural Resources Wales.

• Ofwat allowed £1.1bn for storm-overflow improvements in 2025-30, with a target of an average of 30 spills per overflow by 2029-30. Source. The Welsh steer is 60% of overflows producing low or no harm by 2030 and 100% by 2040. Source
• Welsh Water's own delivery plan counts 165 schemes, and rates its progress Amber: "slower progress than the FD output profile". Source
• Ofwat's package requires spills below 20 a year at "specific overflows". We could not find a list of which.

A good answer: a public, site-by-site schedule: each overflow, the scheme, the date, spills now and spills expected, with the overflows named in Ofwat's package marked, updated every quarter.

2. Which outflows near bathing waters are disinfected?

For Welsh Water and Natural Resources Wales.

• Welsh Water says: "We might have an extra requirement to disinfect our treated effluent near designated bathing waters. We use methods such as UV light… if deemed necessary", and "we don't usually have to disinfect final effluent to rivers". Welsh Water, bathing waters
• Natural Resources Wales names one example: Penybont works, about 2.5 km from Ogmore-by-Sea, "has tertiary UV disinfection treatment in use to kill bacteria in final treated effluent". NRW, Wales Bathing Water Report 2023
• In 2025, 78 of 112 bathing waters were classed Excellent and two failed. Source
• We found no published list of which works discharge near each bathing water, which of them disinfect, and how well.

A good answer: for each designated bathing water, the works and overflows that can reach it, whether each disinfects, the permit conditions, and the effluent test results Welsh Water says it reports to its regulators.

3. Where does the £44.72m go, and who ultimately pays?

For Ofwat and Welsh Water.

Ofwat found that Welsh Water "failed to operate, maintain and upgrade its wastewater assets adequately". It accepted a redress package instead of a penalty, to be delivered in 2025-30: £40.66m to cut spills at named overflows and seal private sewers, £2.0m for fish passage and habitat, £1.0m for a misconnections taskforce and £1.066m for a community fund. The penalty Ofwat says it would otherwise have imposed was £40.6m. Source. Ofwat says the package is "entirely funded by the company, rather than customers".

Welsh Water has no shareholders. Our reading, not a finding: money a company without shareholders absorbs is money that would otherwise have been reinvested for its customers. Customers do not pay through higher bills, but they may still pay.

A good answer: where in Welsh Water's accounts the cost falls, what it displaces, who decides the community fund's grants, and the overflows the £40.66m will fix, with dates.

4. Why does heat from sludge digestion go unused?

For Welsh Water.

In 2025-26 digestion made 66.3 GWh of heat from sludge, and 27.5 GWh of it was reported as unused (the year before, 41.0 GWh). Source

A good answer: how much of the unused heat is available where and when, and what it could replace, whether at the works, a neighbour, or a heat network.

5. Why is energy self-sufficiency stuck below target?

For Welsh Water and the Welsh Government.

Welsh Water generates 23% of its own energy needs against a target of 35%. It says this is partly because consumption is rising, and because some planned renewable schemes were not delivered "as a result of planning approval and third-party land issues". Source

A good answer: which schemes, where, what stopped each, and what the Welsh Government or planning authorities could change.

6. Could farm slurry go to Welsh Water's digesters, with the cake coming back?

For the Welsh Government and Welsh Water.

Welsh Water already collects sewage sludge from hundreds of works and takes it to a few digesters. Why not farm slurry too, where a farm is too small for a digester of its own? The evidence we have:

• Carrying slurry is no worse than what Welsh Water carries now. Its raw sludge averages 3.1% dry solids; dairy slurry is 9%, about three times drier. How we got this. The west-Wales routes exist: Pembroke Dock sends 91% and Tenby 97% of their output on to the Afan digester (Welsh Water, market information 2024-25).
• It has been tried, and the economics were hard. Holsworthy in Devon collected manure from 3,750 dairy cows on 25 farms within five miles, plus poultry litter and food waste; farmers collected the digestate. Its owners said it was operating profitably but could not fund the reinvestment needed; a university model did "not predict the Holsworthy plant to be profitable, even taking into account the 50% capital grant"; its heat was never sold; it later became a food-waste plant. Ricardo for ClimateXChange, 2017
• Slurry makes little gas. 22 m³ a tonne, around a fifth of food waste or grass silage. The same report concludes that slurry alone is unlikely to pay, and names "inclusion of slurry and FYM in off-farm AD facilities processing a range of feedstocks" as a possible route. Source
• The spare room is small. Welsh Water states about 7,053 tDS a year of spare capacity at its four plants. In slurry terms that is roughly 2,000–4,500 cows (an estimate), about 1.3% of Wales' 254,100 cows. How we got this. A pilot, not a solution, unless capacity is built.
• Nutrients are the catch. A farm that sends slurry away sends its nitrogen and phosphorus with it, and "returning the cake" brings them back. The benefit comes if the nutrients go where they are needed; Welsh Water's own cake already goes to farmland (99.8%). Whether that suits the catchment around a dairy farm is a question for the farm and the regulator.
• What we do not know: whether Welsh Water would accept it, the permits and quality schemes that would apply when slurry is mixed with sewage sludge, the animal-health rules for moving it, and who would pay whom for the haulage.

A good answer: a costed pilot. One hub, the nearest cluster of dairy farms, a gate fee, who pays for haulage, what comes back and where it is spread, and what the regulators say.

7. Is there a quicker win on the dairy farm than a digester?

For the Welsh Government and the dairy industry.

• Barber's Farmhouse Cheesemakers in south-west England put "milk-source" heat pumps from the startup Arkaya Energy into three of its seven milking parlours. They chill the milk and use the heat taken out of it to heat washing water to 92°C. The farm reports saving about £70,000 a year, with a payback of 2 years or less. Source. The Guardian, 17 September 2026
• This is one farm and one supplier. The figures are theirs, reported by a journalist, and we have not seen the data. It shows what is possible, not that it will work on every farm.
• Heat that has a use next door (milk that must be cooled, water that must be heated) is the kind of resource-from-waste that can pay back fast. Compare question 6: Farmers Weekly's worked example for a slurry-only digester returned 1% a year.
• We do not know whether any Welsh dairy farm has one, what support exists for them in Wales, or how many milking parlours could use one.

A good answer: whether this works on Welsh farms and herd sizes, what grants or loans can pay for it, and whether it should come before any digester in the order farmers are advised to act.

8. How is farm pollution found and stopped?

For Natural Resources Wales and the Welsh Government.

For many Welsh rivers the larger cause of poor condition is run-off from land, not the water company. This site began as a case against Welsh Water, and we should say that plainly.

• NRW's incident data lists crude sewage, soil and clay, and slurry as the most frequently reported pollutants, and names the water industry, agriculture, domestic premises and unidentified sources as the main sources of incidents. Its data on why water bodies fail to reach good status "suggested agriculture contributed more to water pollution than the water industry" (presented to the Senedd's committee in December 2021). Welsh Water told the Senedd inquiry that storm overflows are a reason for 4.6% of water bodies. Senedd Research, 2023
• Slurry reaches streams by run-off from land, and "improperly stored slurry can also leak into watercourses". Digesting it does not change that.
• The Control of Agricultural Pollution (Wales) Regulations 2021 apply to "all farm businesses in Wales". Welsh Government guidance
• Anyone can report an incident to NRW, 24 hours a day on 0300 065 3000. NRW says it prioritises the most serious, that not every report needs a visit, and that it does not give feedback on every report. NRW
• We do not know how many farms are inspected each year, how many reports about farms are investigated, or what comes of them.

A good answer: each year, published: farm inspections, reports about farms, how many were investigated and how quickly, and the enforcement and advice that followed, by catchment, so that someone who reports a black-bottomed stream can see what happened.

Why questions, and not fines

Welsh Water has no shareholders and exists for its customers, who are also the people who swim in the water, drink it and live with the sewage. A penalty that lands on the company lands, in the end, on them. That is why we ask for fixes, schedules and plain accounts and not for fines. (This is our argument, not a finding. You may disagree; the evidence above is the same either way.)