"Last week, I launched the government's Plan for Water - a detailed blueprint to clean up our waterways and ensure a plentiful supply for the future. My constituency stretches from the Orwell right up to the Hundred River with many rivers and creeks in between, as well as much farming obviously reliant on water for production and food security. Water is critical for people, for businesses and for nature. While our bathing waters have got cleaner, we still have too much pollution entering our watercourses and why we continue to need investment in wastewater treatment and reservoirs for future supply.
Improving the water quality in our rivers and seas has been important to me long before I became Secretary of State for the Environment. That’s why I’m proud of the consistently excellent ratings of the beaches in Felixstowe and why I previously intervened with Anglian Water to improve their Southwold treatment site which led to Southwold Denes achieving excellent status and gaining the blue flag. Just this week, the stretch of the Deben by Waldringfield was designated a bathing water, recognising the large number of regular swimmers. The Deben itself is already designated a SSSI and sadly, it is deemed to be in unfavourable condition. That can be for plenty of reasons, particularly as it is a tidal estuary up to the Wilford Bridge.
That is why the Plan for Water has as its foundations a local approach, catchment by catchment, community by community, to improve the natural status of our rivers. I will be expecting different groups to come together to make improvements – our water company, our landowners, our users, our internal drainage board as well as our government agencies. The Plan for Water will help make that happen. For the first time, there will be unlimited penalties for polluters and those penalties and fines will be reinvested through a new Water Restoration Fund.
The plan tackles every source of pollution, including from storm overflows, agriculture, plastics, road run-off and chemicals - as well as the pressures on our water resources as a result of hotter, drier summers and population growth. It includes a commitment to consult on a ban on the use of plastic in wet wipes, building on recent action from major retailers including Boots and Tesco who have already stopped selling them.
In East Anglia, despite the recent rain, we are still at risk of drought. Ever since I became MP for Suffolk Coastal, water for farming has been a constant issue, particularly with local frustration that more water was being pumped out to sea than was being abstracted. While designed to support nature, particularly wading birds, it was actually harming local saltmarsh. That is why a few years ago in my first time as a Defra minister, I pulled together local people and agencies to find a solution. The outcome was a truly innovative project very close to home - the Felixstowe Hydrocycle. This made it easier to store water, provide supply for farmers and in addition, it really boosted local wildlife and the health of the saltmarsh. I want to see projects like this replicated across the country where water is scarce. In the meantime, farmers will also be supported with extra funding to tackle water pollution and have sufficient supply for food production.
You can read the Plan online here and also listen to my twenty-minute speech launching it here. Ultimately, I hope this new approach will become a catalyst for us all to think about how we can pull together to secure clean and plentiful water, for people, for businesses and for nature, now and for generations to come."