Well that is to say his Chief Operating Officer replied on his behalf.
Mr Gosden answered some of our questions but in the time honoured fashion ignored the ones he presumably didn't like. For example; how much it would cost to fix this mess.
All he would say, or rather imply is that the improved health of our river would not be worth what they would have to spend and the regulators would not allow it. That is our own government will not allow them to do it. Interesting.
He does kindly admit that Thames Water do pollute with raw sewage in the way that we say but disappointingly regards it as justifiable practice not worthy of change. Is this the best we can hope for from what could be an environmentally responsible company?
The final paragraph is interesting. The customers, who have been kept in the dark about this pollution, would have to fully support any improvement he says, implying they wouldn't (or did I read that wrong). I don't think we were ever asked if we supported the idea of dumping some of the sewage we thought we had paid to have treated properly, back into our rivers untreated, just to make the water industry more profitable. This would be like the council bin collectors doing a bit of fly tipping when there is a big queue at the refuse site!
This is just the start of the campaign. We know that a lot of Thames Water staff would like to see more done for the environment and we hope to work with some of them to find a solution.
We also hope that Mr Gosden and the CEO, Steve Robertson will have a fresh look at this and the new evidence we will soon reveal and will recognise this as the constructive engagement it is intended to be.
With your support we will save our river.
Read the full letter here.,
The letter we sent to the CEO is back in the blog for 27 April.
