Has the solution to sewage dumping been found in Manchester?

A fourteen-year legal epic reaches its conclusion

Dear Millers — which news stories make you genuinely, almost physically, angry? The ongoing sewage dumping practised by water companies on a quasi-industrial scale is certainly one that gets many people’s blood pumping. It’s the combination of the damage done to nature, the way that wild swimming — arguably humanity’s most natural leisure activity — has been made unsafe, and the vast sums made by the privatised water companies in question (here in the North West, United Utilities made more than half a billion pounds in profit last year).

After a while, anger often fades to despair. Sewage continues to be dumped, last year’s figures are significantly worse than the year before, and there doesn’t seem to be any way of holding the companies involved to account.

But has the answer at last been found — in Manchester? Last year the Supreme Court sat here for the first time. In a little reported case, United Utilities (the water company for the North West) was taken to court by Peel Ports Grou…