[vhfpmr (OP)]

The never ending combined sewer problem.

I don't know exactly when combined sewers went out of fashion, but my street's the best part of a century old, and that has separate storm drain and foul sewer, so I'm thinking that that ought to have been ample time to fix the legacy sewers by now. Just how long did it take the Victorians to build the original sewers from scratch on a fraction of the GDP we have? It seems to me that this problem's nothing to do with a lack of money, and everything to do with a society that systematically prioritises spending its money on the wrong things.

From what I've seen, the few measures that have been taken so far consist of building reservoirs to contain the storm surges. With climate change making the weather increasingly unpredictable, that seems like making ourselves hostages to fortune. How long before they're obsolete? If we had a programme of dualling the combined sewers, that would be fixing the problem instead of kicking the can down the road.

AIUI the reason that the water companies were privatised in the first place was that the government saw this problem coming, and decided to frame the private sector instead of waiting until they got the blame themselves.

[alancalverd]

IIRC the real problem was that the EU demanded privatisation of state assets a far as possible, in order to make a "level playing field" across Europe and allow transnational investment in utilities. This suited the Thatcher mentality and led to pretty much every public service disaster you can name, because unlike disgusting socialist France, the UK privatised not just the management of assets but the assets themselves, and instituted "light touch" regulators with no actual power to control prices or direct expenditure.

In the case of water, each company presents its investment plans, borrows money for, say, a 10 year project, then hikes up its prices (there being no actual competition) to cover the interest on the loans, and awards its directors and shareholders huge dividends and bonuses for meeting the targets it sets itself for the current year. The actual investment may never be made because the money goes to consultants and lawyers whose job is to find reasons why it can't be done, and there is no evidence that any of the shareholders (the shares were sold at bargain prices) has ever actually invested beyond their first purchase.