Campaigners have warned of a “silent crisis” of a chemical damaging rivers because of leaky pipes. Phosphates are intentionally added to tap water to prevent lead from pipes from dissolving into the water supply, a process that protects public health.
About 19% of all tap water in England and Wales leaks from pipes into the environment daily, unleashing around 1,200 tonnes of harmful phosphorus annually – the weight of 100 double-decker buses. The Angling Trust referred to this as a “silent crisis” driving eutrophication, where excess nutrients drive algal blooms, dissolved oxygen depletion, and harm to fish and other aquatic life. Raw sewage and agricultural runoff are also major contributors to nutrient levels in the environment.
Alex Farquhar, campaigns officer at the Angling Trust, said: “We urgently need to see all lead pipes replaced, but at the current rate we’ll have to wait 1,000 years or more. In the meantime, phosphate pollution from leaky pipes is a silent killer of our waterways.
“It’s clear that the water industry will not make the necessary changes themselves. We need regulatory action to accelerate lead pipe replacement and leakage reduction, because the environment simply cannot wait.”
Although lead pipes in new plumbing were banned in the UK in 1970 because of their detrimental effects of lead poisoning on human health, countless old lead pipes remain in place.
The Angling Trust’s Water Quality Monitoring Network (WQMN) found that with more than half (62%) of 60 tap water samples maxed out their phosphate monitors at the highest possible reading of 2.5ppm.
The WQMN found that 34% of all river samples tested between July 2023 and July 2024 breached “good ecological status” for phosphate concentration.
The Angling Trust has demanded a drastic increase in investment to replace lead pipes. It also urged the Government to make pipe leakage reduction a requirement backed by penalties and rewards,
A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: “This Government recognises the growing pressure on our water system and is taking decisive action.
“Over £104billion of private investment is being spent on upgrading crumbling pipes and cutting sewage pollution, as well as creating nine new reservoirs to secure our water supply. We’ve also ringfenced the investment so customers’ hard-earned money can never be spent on bonuses and shareholder payments again.”
A Water UK spokesman said:“Leakage is at the lowest level ever recorded, down more than a third since the 1990s, and reduced by more than 8% in the last four years alone. Water companies will invest record amounts over the next five years repairing leaks and upgrading infrastructure, to improve leakage even further.”
