Original subtitles

MARGARET THATCHER: Privatised water is a better deal

than nationalised water. INDISTINCT HECKLING.

TODDLER BABBLES

Lewis, what did I tell you about that seaweed?

Do not throw it.

CHILDREN SQUEAL AND GIGGLE

Are you hungry?

What do you fancy?

Ice cream.

No! No. We just got here, you wally.

Yeah, we'll get it on the way back to the chalet. All right?

Yeah, we'll get it... we'll get it later.

There, isn't it? I did promise you. I will, I promise.

Girls, wait, please! Heather, stop!

Bloody hell!

Heather, I told you to stop, didn't I?

I think that's poo. Of course it's not poo.

It stinks.

It wasn't poo.

Don't... Don't go in.

All right. Don't go in like that.

How far shall I go?

Go as far as you can.

All right. All right, love. All right, love.

It's all up her legs. Wash it off.

Scrub it. You what?

Scrub it. All right.

Here, Heather... Have I got it?

Don't you think...?

Did you get it off her? You what?

Did you get it off her?

Yeah, I think so.

Get a towel. Here, get her dry.

Here. There you go. I've got a smelly little mermaid.

Still smells, that.

I like...

Is that ticklish? Yeah.

Let's do the other one. How about that one?

No. No.

Oh, look at that.

What is quite remarkable, really, that most of the freshwater fish

in England was just on this stretch.

Seriously. Including the chub. The chub came later, of course.

They're gone. What? The chub?

The chub, the barbel, the eels, everything.

Well, yes, I mean the water is brown.

You don't really think about the colour

when you see it every day.

I mean, the brown here just seems normal.

Yes.

Do you and Eileen still do that water vole register thing?

No that's...

No, that... They're gone as well.

Mean, I remember when I first came here

that it was crystalline, wasn't it?

You never talk about your work.

Well, I'd have to, you know.

It's part of the training.

It's not sort of, you know, dinner conversation.

No, it's not like I'm a... I'm a Russian spy, am I?

You know, I'm not working for Putin, am I?

That makes me wonder. Now, why would you say that?

That's a bit... You investigated bent coppers, wasn't it?

Yeah, 25 years. Well, come on, 25 years -

You must have... you must have some stories, mustn't you?

Not really.

Why don't you have the game pie? I don't like game pie.

Shall we get some mixed greens?

No, I'm just having the soup and the crusty bread.

That sounds nice.

Maybe that's extra, isn't it? No, no, no.

That's right. Yes.

There will have been

some minor discolouration in one or two sections of the river.

There's, um... There's been a discharge from the Burford Works.

A discharge? Discharge of what?

Er, untreated sewage. Yeah.

Legally, they're allowed to spill after heavy rainfall.

Ahem.

So they can... they can... they can just do that.

That's what he said.

They're allowed to dump untreated sewage into the river

right after heavy rain.

But that can't be right. Because it rains all the time.

Well, heavy rain, he said.

I don't remember any heavy rain, do you?

I'm going to write to Thames Water

and ask how many times they've put sewage into the Windrush.

They're not going to tell you that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, they've got to. It's the law.

"Dear Mr Smith, no untreated sewage has been discharged into

"the River Windrush for the past three years.

"Untreated sewage mixed with treated sewage

"has been discharged 240 times."

"Kind regards."

When did that come in? When did it come in that you could

put untreated sewage into the river, per se?

I don't see how

putting any kind of pathogens into the river could possibly be allowed.

I mean, people are swimming in there.

"Dear Mr Smith,

"in response to your request for information,"

"please find attached the documents below."

"Kind regards."

Wankers.

This must be like one of your cases, mustn't it, all this,

when you used to be a detective?

No.

But, you know, poisonous stuff

in the river, and we're not being warned about it,

that'd be a... that'd be a scandal.

It's a tummy bug, 48-hour thing. Plenty of liquids.

I'll give you some anti-sickness tablets just to stop the vomiting.

OK. Of course.

Heather? I'm here.

The doctor said you've got to take your medicine now.

Let's see.

Close your eyes if you want, Mum.

Yeah. Keep them closed. There you go.

Well, exactly.

No. They said you treated sewage

mixed with untreated sewage 240 times.

Yeah.

JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS

This is free jazz, is it?

Um, no. It's not free jazz. It's contemporary jazz.

It's nothing like free jazz. Right.

And people pay money to listen to that.

Did you just come around to piss me off?

No, I'm going to show you something.

Look at this.

So, what is this? Er, this is...

Is this a reply from Thames Water?

They're drowning me in numbers. Oh, I can see that.

I mean, how are you supposed to make anything of that crap?

Well, maybe... maybe that's what they're banking on.

There's a needle in there somewhere.

Just, you know, go through the haystack to find it.

You're the Oxford professor of mathematics.

No. Computational biology.

It's not, um... Still maths.

It's not. It's machine learning, actually.

So what's that? Like AI?

I know you're going to take the piss,

but it's... a bit like free jazz.

Oh.

Depressing and pointless.

Er, no. No. There's rules.

So there's a kind of order beneath the chaos.

And you've got to listen really hard for the patterns.

Why don't you just email me these and I'll take a look.

JAZZ PLAYS

Fuck me.

These, what you've given me, they're flow numbers.

They track the sewage coming into

the works and the rate at which it's treated

so it's safe to go back into the river.

But there's something weird about this.

Yeah.

What? Well, here, look.

Now, on the 27th of December,

the flow of treated effluent coming out of the works just stops.

It just stops completely. Right. What do you mean it stops?

The flow just stops.

There's no... there's no treated effluent going back into the river.

So two days after Christmas,

the people of Burford stopped going to the toilet.

No, no, see, this is it.

Because the raw sewage is still going into the works...

but there's nothing coming out.

Now, that's just not right.

So what do we do? I don't know,

we go back to them and say, give us a bit more detail.

Is that Ashley and Peter? Yes. Yes, yes.

Well, thanks so much for taking my call.

It's Commander Aylard here.

External affairs and sustainability at Thames.

Richard, lovely to speak with you.

Listen, I thought, well, why not get on the old dog and bone...?

Well, we appreciate you calling. Thank you.

Not at all. Having our feet held to the fire like this is the thing

that keeps us focused.

Yeah. What we've been doing,

we've been asking about this anomaly in the flow data.

On the 27th of December, there's no treated effluent

going back into the river.

Yeah. Nobody seems to be able to explain why that is.

It's taken too long to get to the bottom of this.

I've had to put some rockets up a few jacksies, frankly.

Turns out the flow metres at Burford were on the blink.

Heavy rain. The sewage flow was normal,

but the... the sensors weren't generating any data.

Safe to assume the people of Burford did not stop discharging.

The measurements were temporarily interrupted.

And we'd like to invite you

on a tour of the Burford works.

It's just strange, isn't it, that,

um, all of the sensors stopped working at that one point?

We can't think of any other explanation, frankly.

But you know, I won't be there, regrettably.

But Leonie will be there, and you'll be in very good hands.

You know, of course, we'd like to do more.

But the challenge is

that Burford's sewers are basically Victorian.

Does anyone actually work here?

It's an unmanned facility.

It should be unpeopled really, shouldn't it?

Did they have unpeopled works in Victorian times?

Good lord, no.

But we do have a state-of-the-art network of sensors which track

all the treated fluid and effluent through the works.

So nobody... nobody works here.

The sensors automatically transmit data

to our waste operation control centre in Reading 24 hours a day.

Right.

That's what we call the telemetry.

And what happens if something breaks down?

Oh, so our works are serviced

by a team of mobile engineers.

If a piece of kit malfunctions,

a trigger will sensor an alarm

and an engineer is dispatched within two hours.

Oh, right. Oh.

Oh, in here is where the engineers logbooks live.

They keep a record of anything

that happens in one of these.

But the stuff up here, this is the really exciting part.

So this is all the live,

real time data being uploaded from the plants.

Yes, I can see it's quite extensive, isn't it?

You can see the information coming through, can't you?

Mm. Yeah.

It's funny because, like, you know, all the data's being pumped out.

You can see it, but actually no-one's looking at it.

You could save a bit of electricity there, couldn't you?

What's that over there? You've got... a cafe?

No, that is our dedicated breakout zone,

you know, for teas, coffees, relaxation.

Um, yeah. Inviting. Inviting, isn't it?

Yeah. No. It's nice, I like it.

It's just nobody's here to enjoy the tea.

Oh, no. No. Well, thank God.

That would mean something's going wrong.

All right. Thank you.

Great. Yeah. Great.

Oh, sorry. There's a hole there.

Did anyone mention that we'd been invited to the town hall in Burford?

The commander wants us all there.

It's really exciting, actually. You know, we think it's important

that we hold our hands up when mistakes are made.

God! Did you see her... see her face? Like, "You do like..."

I can't believe it.

And we can ask for all the telemetry.

You know, they've got to give it to us.

That's... that's hundreds of thousands of data points,

and everything that goes on in the works.

No, no, just try not to get too excited.

Well, I'm just saying.

I'm just saying. Calm down.

OK. Have you been giving her plenty of liquids?

Yes. Yeah. Been keeping her warm?

Yes. Yeah.

Did everything you said. OK. And are there any more symptoms?

Yes.

She's been bleeding from her backside, Doctor.

I'm calling an ambulance.

So, look, I've got the telemetry for Burford.

And I've deciphered the engineers' handwriting.

27th of December. Engineer's name is Michael Lazarus.

ALARM BEEPS

It turns out here that at 5.08 on the morning of the 27th,

the alarm got triggered at the works.

The communications had failed.

But it must have been intermittent,

because at 6.08 the centre got a message to say

that both the main inlet pumps had failed.

TWO ALARMS ECHO

Then at 8.16, another alarm was triggered.

THREE ALARM BLAST

The storm tank was overflowing.

And that's when the dumping started.

So the pumps have packed up, the storm tank's overflowing.

You've got three alarms sounding.

Obviously, they've dispatched an engineer.

Not for 5.5 hours.

ALARMS BLAST

Fuck!

ENGINEER:

I don't need this shit.

Storm tanks filled to the top.

All the sewage is flushing into the river.

ALARMS BLAST

Set.

Return liquor pump reset.

Might fail again.

Don't know how long this is going to hold.

Trying my best here.

Everything's failing.

He did what he could to patch things up,

but by then it's been dumping sewage into

the Windrush for over five hours.

And we know, we know that there wasn't any

heavy rainfall like Aylard said,

because it didn't even rain on that day.

Yeah. And then the oxidation tank failed on the 28th.

The rotation arms packed up on the 29th.

Burford was falling apart.

Couldn't handle all the sewage it was taking in,

so it was just flushing everything into the river.

And I feel that Mick is the kind

of person who's in the habit of telling the truth, don't you?

Yeah. What about Commander Aylard?

MONITOR BEEPS

The results are back from the lab. It's quite serious.

Heather has been infected with E coli...

the most aggressive strain - O157.

We're going to keep her comfortable, keep an eye on her,

and hope that it passes through sleep.

It's possible that the virus

could attack Heather's kidney functions,

which might have serious consequences for other organs.

ALARM BEEPS

This was really about a temporary

malfunction to the alarm,

we think at least partly caused by

the heavy rainfall that day,

rather than any actual interruption to the treatment process.

So what I'd like to do... Sorry.

Can I, um, can I say a few words, Commander?

Yes. Of course.

There was no heavy rain.

Um. In fact, um...

it didn't rain at all.

If you'll bear with me.

What I have here is the engineer's logbooks.

The engineer is called Michael Lazarus.

And what you can see from Mr Lazarus's logs is that

the alarms were, in effect, functioning as normal.

They were triggered as soon as the flooding began.

But the thing is, Mr Lazarus was not dispatched to the works

for more than five hours.

The plant was falling apart.

It couldn't treat the sewage it was taking in,

and so it was just pumping it all out directly into the river.

Well, um, thanks so much, Ash.

And to you, Peter. It does look as though I've been misinformed,

and I intend to get to the bottom of this.

And I'll be putting my thumb on whoever's...

So what are you going to do about what these two gentlemen have said?

What's going to happen now? I think that we are both shocked,

absolutely shocked to hear that information, because...

You've said one thing. They've actually backed up with evidence

something completely the opposite.

Our river...

you're just dumping in and just covering everything up.

And making money.

And what what's the long-term problems for the wildlife,

the fish and the birds?

What's happening with those? The ecological welfare of our rivers

and our waterways is something that we find incredibly important.

And what are you doing? Nothing. You're polluting our water.

I wouldn't even let my dog swim in the river now.

It's disgusting. It is a highest, highest priority

that we will be fixing this as soon as possible.

I can assure you,

from all of us at Thames Water, we are working night and day...

I think we need to have a debrief.

I do, I do as well. All right, thank you, sir.

Thank you for um... Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much for our meeting. Thank you.

Shall we go outside? Yes.

I think he just lied to us.

Just straight up and down to our faces.

Well, no. He said he was misinformed.

Princess Diana's equerry.

I mean... What is that, by the way?

I don't know.

It helps when people lie.

It's how you know they've got something to hide.

I mean, it's ammonia

we need to keep an eye out because that's going

to read high right after they've dumped the sewage.

Fuck me. It's... it is actually like one of your cases, isn't it?

Not really. No.

It's more real-time monitoring of the river.

And the outflow pipes as well.

So the question is, is Burford acting alone?

Because there's what, seven... Seven.

Seven works along the Windrush.

So we need to know if Burford is an outlier.

You know, a single failing plant.

Like a lone assassin, just killing everything that lives in the water.

Or are there more like Burford?

Well, I mean, I suppose I could order... order the telemetry

and get it for all of them. Yeah.

Dear EIR team, I would be grateful if you could supply...

Your sincerely, Professor Peter Hammond.

I can't find a pulse.

Is there nothing?

That's weird.

No, I can't feel anything. No.

Somebody call for help! Get help. Can we get a doctor in here, please?

What have you done to your finger?

Oh, I don't know.

I woke up this morning, it was like that.

It feels a bit weird.

Well, don't you think that Charlie should take a look at that?

I mean, she is... she is a chemist, isn't she?

I know she's a chemist. I live with her.

OK, so you know that they sent me

all these data flows from the works at Witney and at Church Hanborough.

Yeah. But what I've done is I've converted

the programme that I built for the foetal alcohol kids.

What happened there was that the mothers,

they were being paid in wine,

so most of their children had foetal alcohol syndrome.

What I did was that I took...

I took thousands of photographs of these FAS kids.

And so by showing the machine, hundreds of these faces

of these unborn children, we taught it to spot the features

of foetal alcohol syndrome in the womb.

So when the programme sees it in a scan,

then it can tell the doctor straight away,

and then they can start helping the mother and the kid.

Now, Burford does most of its heavy-lifting during early morning,

just before everyone goes to work, and then again

in the evening, when they come back home.

So we can see the flows of treated effluent hitting

the daily peaks and troughs.

Now, that's when the penny dropped.

The thing is, that is just like the contours

on a baby's face.

By showing the machine

nine years of this flow data,

I've taught it to recognise when the usual flows,

they don't... they don't show up.

When the everyday flows are missing,

well, they're not treating the sewage.

And if they're not treating the sewage,

there's nowhere for it to go. Except... Into the river.

Except into the river.

We've decided to transfer Heather to the Bristol Hospital for children.

It's one of the best in the country.

They'll be able to look after her there.

It's getting bigger, I think.

Have you been in the river again? Yeah. Yeah.

Did you have any cuts?

Yeah. I, er...

I pricked my finger on a thorn when I was setting up the camera.

Before or after you went into the river?

Before. Right.

So if there's a pathogen in the water,

you've given it direct entry into your bloodstream.

Is that bad?

It's bad, you muppet. You need antibiotics.

You know, a lot of sewage has drugs in it,

and if they mix with bacteria,

then the bacteria becomes antibiotic resistant,

which means that the antibiotics might not work on you.

So they might have to try different types of medication on you.

Oh, God.

Hold on.

What's that? What are you doing?

I'm just drawing on you.

Why? Because if it... If it gets bigger, then we will know.

That looks worse now.

So that's where she drew the marker. And that's how much bigger

it's got gone in, like, two days.

Bloody hell! And that is just

from putting your hand in the river.

Yep. I'm an idiot. We know that.

But, I mean, if it's doing that to your hand,

just think about what it's doing to all the creatures

that live in the river.

Exactly. What was it you wanted to show me?

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I've got all this data through from.

Northleach. You know, we went to the Wheatsheaf there.

Oh, yeah. That was overpriced for what it was.

Well, you thought so, but... Anyway, look,

they must have sent this by mistake

because I'm pretty sure they haven't read it. Why?

Why do you say that?

Because it says here that the works at Northleach,

they haven't treated any sewage for three and a half months.

So... so either the good people of Northridge

have been holding it in for three and a half months, or...

I know they did not do that because I have the logbooks,

and Northleach is on Michael Lazarus's beat.

Fucking hate my life.

ALARM BLASTS, ELECTRICITY CRACKLES

Fuck.

MICHAEL:

Storm tank high alarm sounding for nearly 48 hours now.

All four biofilters not rotating. No flow coming into the works.

Fuck's sake! Of course...

ALARMS CONTINUE

Site's still heavily flooded.

Roadside flooding believed to have been caused by this.

Oh! Fuck off!

Oh, for fuck's sake!

ALARMS CONTINUE

Ughhh.

Yeah. Liam. Yeah. Listen, mate, I'm at Northleach.

Powers gone, mate. Power's packed up.

Generator's gone.

Mate, it's gone.

We can't treat sewage without any power.

We're either backing up or we're dumping it straight into the river.

Oh, and Liam, mate...

there's sewage coming up from the ground.

Thames's own data shows Northleach hasn't treated any sewage

for three and a half months. Yeah.

So look...

that's two works within a few miles of each other,

both rotting into the sludge, both dumping illegally.

We've got to get this to the Environment Agency.

They've got prosecuting powers. What do you mean?

Well, they don't have to show their evidence to the police.

These are crimes. They can prosecute privately.

What, so they can just... just take Thames to court?

Yes.

They're the sewage police.

Wow. Uh, can anyone else do that?

Post office. The post office? That's unusual.

I see that your swelling's gone down.

Yeah, yeah, the antibiotics are kicking in, thank God.

And it's about keeping us a little bit more local.

So I'm just going to fold this up, actually.

We want to strip out

as much unnecessary regulation as possible.

So under operator self-monitoring,

we're going to be asking the water companies to monitor

their own environmental performance, flagging any breaches

to us as a priority.

I... Um, sorry, I don't understand.

So, you want water companies to monitor their own pollution?

Yeah, it's about shifting the burden of regulation

onto the companies and asking the water companies

if there's been a pollution to give us the details.

Uh... Hang on, hang on.

Just... just to be clear, you want us

to ask the water companies to tell us when they've dumped sewage?

It's about pivoting away from...

away from on site inspections to a more desk-based approach.

Yeah, it's sort of streamlining our process.

So you want us to stop visiting sewage works?

No, no. We'll still be doing on site inspections.

Yeah. Of course. Um, provided that we give the company

two weeks' notice of our visit.

Yeah, but that's a... that is a problem

because... Well... Sorry, again.

Yeah. Um, but if we give the water companies two weeks' notice... Yeah.

They'll just clean up before we get there. Yeah.

I mean, it is an honour system.

So if the companies say that there hasn't been an incident,

I don't think we should go looking for reasons to challenge that.

So what you're saying is regulate yourselves,

and then just let us know if you've committed any crimes.

Yeah.

Thanks so much.

OK. See you.

Ohh!

To Julia Simpson, area director, Environment Agency.

Dear Julia, I live in Oxfordshire, near the River Windrush.

My neighbour, Professor Peter Hammond,

and I have been gathering evidence of sewage discharges

into our river by Thames Water.

We'd like to bring what we've learned

to the attention of the Environment Agency.

Dear Julia, we'd like to invite you to meet some members

of our group to discuss issues of sewage pollution.

Dear Julia, we are going to take a trip

down the river on foot and by boat,

looking at possible sources of sewage pollution.

Would the Environment Agency be interested?

Dear Julia, we are still waiting for a suitable point of contact.

Dear Ashley, the Department For The Environment

will provide you with a full response by the 8th of June 2018.

She's got an MBE,

and a bloody big salmon.

Why is she taking so long to get back to us?

Doesn't she realise we're doing her job for her? I don't know.

I might put in a complaint.

MOBILE BUZZES

Hello? Mr Smith.

It's Julia Simpson from the Environment Agency.

I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you.

Honestly, waiting for Defra. It is maddening.

Well, we found each other now. We wanted to ask about how

the agency monitors sewage dumps into the river.

Spills? Yes.

Well, as you probably know, we manage operator self-monitoring.

What? Operator self-monitoring. What's that?

Yes, it's for Thames Water to report any potential breaches.

You mean it's Thames's job

to tell you when they've dumped sewage?

To report potential pollution incidents. Yes.

And what if they don't report them?

We would expect Thames to report 100% of pollution incidents.

So it's not even your responsibility to inspect the works.

For...? Well, to see if they're working.

No. Absolutely. We inspect the treatment works.

Yes, of course we do. How often?

Well, we would inspect perhaps once every few days,

up to perhaps once every six months,

depending on the inspection team's judgment.

Listen, we're aware that there's been some discussion locally around

water quality on the Windrush,

and in fact we've just completed a new survey.

So I was thinking it would be a good idea

for me to take up your invitation,

come down to the village hall and to go over some of the results.

So the good news is that our testing shows

that there's no evidence

that the Windrush is seriously polluted,

or that the quality of the water has declined.

We do know that the river is more brown these days,

but our evidence has shown

that this brown colour has got nothing to do with sewage.

Uh, sorry, we've spoken earlier on the telephone.

I wonder if you could confirm something you told me then,

that, um, the agency inspects all the works

along the Windrush between every two to three days and every six months.

Yes. That's right.

Professor Peter Hammond,

and I'm also part of this Windrush group.

A colleague of yours told me that actually

you only inspect once every eight years.

And also, I've just been... Listen. I've been... I've been running

your figures. And, um, so you've only done about half of

the inspections that you needed to have been doing.

In fact, you've only been visiting the works once every 16 years.

We also took a look at your water quality tests.

And the thing is, they were

all carried out upstream from all the major sewage works.

It's almost as if you've chosen the cleanest

part of the river to conduct your test.

PEOPLE REMONSTRATE

The river is actually devoid of anything in there.

The fish and all the wildfowl

and everything that leads on from that,

from your kingfishers to everything, you've absolutely ruined this place

and you should be bloody well ashamed of yourself.

And the watercress banks.

You destroyed the watercress beds as well.

That used to be a source of industry years ago.

Totally gone. We will be taking all your feedback into consideration.

I will have to go away...

And we will listen to your feedback.

I promise you.

When? When?

Thank you.

Uh, is it Mr Lazarus? My name's Ash Smith.

This is my colleague, Professor Peter Hammond.

We're doing some research on Thames Water,

and, er, well, listen, it's all off the record.

We're not disclosing the names of anyone we talk to.

We wondered if you could spare ten minutes.

People call me Mickey, first of all. Thank you very much for coming here.

I know it's not easy. We appreciate you so much, I can't tell you.

I'm not a grass. OK.

So I did grass on my mate like in year eight back in the day.

But this is different from grass, right?

This is like blowing the whistle. I told you, I'm an ex-copper. Yeah.

You've told me that as well. That's made me nervous.

This is not... Grassing is like when you grass your mates,

and blowing the whistle -

whistle-blowing - is when you like grass on your boss.

Right?

We're going to start. All right, check this out.

Most water companies get sold every ten years or so.

JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley,

Kuwait sovereign fund,

Chinese banks,

we've had them all, mate.

So, Macquarie bought us in 2006.

That's the... That's the Australian hedge fund.

It's known as the millionaires' factory,

such are the reputed riches of many of Macquarie's key executives.

It's a vampire kangaroo. That's it.

And they've earned that name because they are bloodsuckers.

Leading companies rely on Macquarie for advice, access to capital...

The first thing they did

was sell our offices and then rent them back to us.

What? Wrong 'uns.

They make Del Boy look like a fucking amateur.

Then they said that we had to get

management clearance to buy pens.

Right to the top to buy a Biro, not even a Parker.

Not a fancy pen, just a normal pen.

Piss-take. All right?

Now, let's say this. Right.

A pipe's broken, what do you do?

Normally you take it out,

you put a new one in.

They would tell us to stick a collar around it.

It's not gonna hold. What's a collar?

It's just like sticking plaster. It's not gonna hold.

It's a temporary fix. The pipe's still rotten.

OK? It's gonna go again. It's a botched job.

It's like Frankenstein.

So, why don't they want to do it properly?

Why don't they want to spend money and seal it properly?

They don't give a monkey's about the works.

You know why? Because they're gonna flip you.

If they don't want to spend any money on it,

how are they going to maintain your works?

They don't give a shit. You know why?

They're like dodgy house flippers.

They're gonna go in there, it's still rotten inside,

and they flip it. They're out.

That's why I bank with Macquarie.

Macquarie, when they flogged us,

they walked away with around 2.8 billion quid.

It's scandalous.

So, how do you know all this, then, Mickey?

I started working for Thames when I was 16, right?

On my second day, I joined the union.

I get people ringing me up every day.

"Mickey, it's all falling apart. We can't keep it going."

Pete, if you were there, working there,

you were an engineer, you know,

and the pumps ain't working,

you're at capacity, what's your best option?

Well, the best option, obviously,

is just to get rid of the sewage, I suppose.

The only option is to press the button that flushes it all out.

I'm not proud to admit that and I feel guilty, you know?

I see people swimming in the... in these rivers

and their kids swim in the rivers.

What am I supposed to do? I know what goes in there.

I put it in there.

We're at tipping point here, fellas.

So, we have run the brain tests.

Heather's brain has lost the ability

to control her vital organs and, unfortunately, they are failing.

I'm really very sorry...

but I think it's time

we consider turning off her ventilators.

AMY: Dear Professor Hammond,

I'm a member of Citizens Against South West Water.

We formed a year ago to fight

the company's sewage dumping in our bit of Devon.

One of our group

was recently given these, which we thought you should see.

"A girl of eight may have been the first person in Britain

"to have contracted fatal E.coli poisoning from raw sewage.

"Ten other people,

"including four children,

"who all visited the beach on July the 28th,"

"were also struck down by the same bacterial strain."

"Heather Preen died of E.coli."

If you like, we could bring her over to you.

There we go.

All right. There we go. All right. MUM SOBS.

We'll just leave you together for a little while now, OK?

You're all right.

SHE SOBS

You're all right.

You're all right.

Sorry. OK, there we go.

All right.

There we go.

Be careful with her head. It's OK, I've got her.

We're fine, come on.

Thank you.

Yeah, s... Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you.

Right, yeah.

SHE SNIFFLES

So, you know how I taught

the machine to look for the anomalies

in Witney and Church Hanborough?

Yeah, all right. What, have you been free jazzing your numbers again?

Well, it's actually a lot of hard work, you know?

No, I know. Sorry, sorry. I'm just looking for the patterns

and spotting the deviations. Yeah, right.

And you know that... You do know that

when the machine sees an abnormality,

it can only mean one thing - that it's dumping sewage.

Yes. OK. So, in the nine years that I've dated for

at these two works alone,

Witney and Church Hanborough,

they've dumped sewage a thousand times.

These aren't accidents, Ash.

It's a policy.

This is starting to look like organised crime.

COUGHING Fuck!

Nah, this isn't right.

That's BLEEP.

No, this ain't right.

That's pure sewage.

You say you've got insufficient evidence,

but we keep giving you the evidence.

All we ever do is give you the evidence.

If you don't know what caused the infection,

then you need to shut down the beach.

That's not going to happen.

I wonder if we should be calling it an outbreak.

It feels like the kind of term that could alarm people.

We are conducting an investigation under section 108

of the Environmental Act. Whoa, whoa, whoa...

Close the beach before this happens to somebody else.

With their kids,

with fishing nets sitting amongst turds.

Reuben!

Come on. Reuben!

We need another whistleblower.

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