The UK public is still reeling from the newly revealed realities of our reeking waterways.

The new Channel 4 series, Dirty Business, lays bare the pollution in our rivers and seas, making people and nature sick.

Unfortunately, Wales is not immune to the scandal; in fact, it's home to some of the worst figures.

Wales’ biggest water company, Dŵr Cymru (Welsh Water), had the highest number of sewage spills in 2024, pumping raw sewage into the environment 118,276 times.

This is the highest figure of any UK water company, equivalent to a spill more than once every five minutes.

Raw sewage pollution is not only bad for human health (the series dramatises the real-life death of 8-year-old Heather Preen, who caught a pathogen from a dirty Devon beach), but severely reduces oxygen levels in the water, impacting all life and causing mass fish mortality.

Less than half of Welsh rivers are classed as ‘good’ by government standards, with rivers Teifi and Usk particularly struggling, and a waterway in Llanbrynmair classed as the ‘worst in Wales’ for three years in a row.

The series points to Thatcher’s privatisation of water companies and cuts to enforcement as the reason why we’re in dire straits.

Though Dŵr Cymru is non-profit, the CEO recently took home close to one million pounds in salary and bonuses.

Dŵr Cymru has also been punished - last year, it was asked to pay £1.35m for over 800 offences involving improper monitoring, but this was reduced to £120,000 on appeal.

Despite strict environmental laws and new ones brought in by Westminster and Senedd, the citizen science investigation that the series hinges around discovered gaps in water companies' reporting of spills of up to a year at a time.

Water companies are allowed to issue untreated sewage during extreme rainfall, but neighbour duo Peter Hammond and Ashley Smith found that companies were also seeping raw sewage during periods with no rain, too.

This puts the mystery illnesses Borth dippers suffered from in 2024 into new light, along with the discoloured water and fish kill spotted on the Leri last summer.

These incidents could have nothing to do with the sewage pollution, but how can the public trust companies or regulators with such glaring omissions?

The Guardian brands this “decriminalisation by underresourcing” with enforcers' funding cut.

Surfers Against Sewage CEO Giles Bristow branded the system “broken”, calling clean water a “bare minimum”: “This is not a crisis of the past; it is happening right now. Communities across the UK are living with the consequences of a failing water industry.”

Citizens in Wales have taken matters into their own hands, regularly testing water quality on the Dyfi and Teifi.

Natural Resources Wales states they investigate and take action on illegal discharges, and “pressed for an ambitious investment programme to address the impacts of these spills”, which NRW will monitor the delivery of.

Dŵr Cymru are investing £2.5bn on environmental improvement projects, but admitted that removing storm overflows completely was “unaffordable”.