My kind of family weekend break
Plaid has come up with an original policy idea that I sincerely hope is adopted, whoever runs Wales after Thursday.
Dwr Cymru Welsh Water (DCWW) are the only UK water company to be based on a 'not for profit' model. This allows them to plough any profits back into the company or use them to reduce bills. No company is perfect and they have made their share of mistakes but as far as large water companies go, I believe that they are the pick of the bunch in the UK. They are also the only company to be given significant funding by OFWAT (the water regulator) to reduce surface water entering the sewerage system unnecessarily.
What Plaid are proposing is not only easy to deliver, but has the ability to significantly reduce the costs of managing sewage network in Wales. Every Local Authority contributes significantly to the pumping and treatment of sewage, due to unnecessary run-off from highways into the sewage network, as well as from other sources. If every Council agreed an achievable target to reduce their run-off to adopted sewers (ones that DCWW are responsible for), then the pumping and treatment costs for DCWW could be dramatically reduced. Modern treatment plants take up less room and process huge volumes of raw sewage but in doing so, they use massive amounts of energy. When also taking into account the cost of managing hundreds of pumping stations, the potential reduction in the carbon footprint for sewage treatment would be massive. The beauty of this proposal is that any savings would not go to a profit driven multi-national (as in England) but to DCWW. They can then either cut the bills or re-invest to further improve their network, such as reducing the risk of flooding or the levels of water leaks.
It's feasible, it's practical and it's Plaid's idea. We don't just point to Labour frailties, you know!
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