South West Water is claiming it has no legal obligation to keep rivers and seawater clean of sewage in its defence against a Devon swimmer who is taking the water company to court.
Jo Bateman, who attempts to swim every day off the coast of Exmouth, is taking legal action against South West Water, claiming its frequent sewage discharges into the sea have taken away her legal right to a public “amenity”.
However, in its defence to Ms Bateman’s claim, seen by i, the water firm states no one has a legal right to swim in the sea.
Pretty sure no one has the legal right to dump sewage in the sea either but go off I guess?
That used to be the case, mostly because the EU had rules about that. Then Brexit happened and dumping of sewage prohibitions were one of the first to be tossed on the bonfire of rules. And joy was in the corprate greedy shriveled heart.
Pretty sure there is no legal right not to dump menure on the guys face
There definitely is a way to find out
It’s not exactly an uncommon occurrence.
The sooner we start tarring, feathering and shunning these corporate parasites the sooner we can go back to a decent society.
Take the CEO and board members, tar and feather them, then throw them into the spot they dump their shit.
The public has no legal obligation to provide soap.
Hear that boys? Air is not an unalienable right! starts dumping all the fun pool chemicals into some building lobbie’s indoor fountain
I respect where you’re coming from but you’ve got to remember that the lobby is on private property so you will get fucked to the full extent of the law.
If only public property was protected as fiercely as private property.
Geev dese peepul ayuh!
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In cases like this, I favour the kind of poetic justice that only irony can deliver - leaving them strapped down to be waterboarded by one of their sewage outlets seems like a good option.
Title sounds like the fucking onion
Well, Nestlé argues that people don’t actually have a right to have access to clean water to live, so that doesn’t seem farfetched at all…
A clean environment should be everyone’s public amenity.
Even if that were true, that firm still has no right to dump sewage in the sea
There are two ways to think about rights: there are legal rights and then there are human rights. Legal rights are conferred by some piece of legal document (legislation, constitution or common law) that a person is able to seek legal redress if their right has been revoked or diminished. Then there are human rights - what we as individual humans believe that each humans should expect as a basic right. The two are not always aligned, predominately because human rights vary greatly from one person’s interpretation to the next.
I think what the company is probably (accurately) arguing is that there is no legal right to swim in the UK, as no specific document states this with any specificity, so the complainant isn’t due compensation or redress of behaviour under the law. This is what the courts will examine as they are the interpreters of law but not the creators of law.
Now, does she have a human right to swim there free of sewage? I damn well think so, and I don’t think that would be a controversial opinion either. The problem is that what we think the law should be and what it is are often different, because legislation can’t represent every view simultaneously. There’s no law that could be drafted that makes forced birthers and pro choice people agree - someone will always lose out.
All of this is to say that while fighting this in court is a shitty thing to do (pun very much intended), it makes sense based upon the way our legal system is set up. There is no incentive for private business to respect rights that are not legally conferred, but there is a financial incentive to do the ‘cheaper and technically legal’ thing. Until we overhaul our legal systems to be inherently protective rather than inherently exploitative, this behaviour will continue.
There’s no legal document because nobody was dumb enough to think that in the first place. If you have to write a law for everything people are allowed to do because some twat wants to argue in bad faith, then the legal system has no basis in reality. In fact, if that were the case, then there is a chicken/egg problem with laws in the first place.
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In my mind, this story equates to life as a human being on this planet, in general.
Why should the c suites have that right. Dump manure on their beach front property and yachts
Its added that even during the peak summer holiday season, South West Water and other firms have no duty to meet certain water quality standards.
“woah, woah, we’re a sewage company, we dump sewage. we’re not a clean water company. So what duty could we possibly have to dump sewage in a responsible manner?”
The defence states: “Even during the bathing season, there is no absolute right to swim each day.”
“you also don’t have an absolute right to walk on a public road, that’s where we’ll be dumping sewage next”
South West Water said it is the responsibility of the Government and the EA to ensure clean water, not the water companies that manage the nation’s rivers and coastline.
“Not our job to clean water, you want the Government. We’re just supposed to manage the water near the shore, so we dump all the sewage about a foot past where our jurisdiction stops. See? no problem!”
And stop breathing our precious air!
