Bather, beware: British beaches and rivers have a sewage problem. It has seeped into election talk

Endurance swimmer Joan Fennelly is undaunted by frigid water and long distances, swimming year-round in the wild. But she takes extra precautions in her own backyard. The River Thames is one of Britain's many waterways contaminated with sewage and agricultural pollution.

Endurance swimmer Joan Fennelly is undaunted by frigid water and long distances, swimming year-round in the wild. But she takes extra precautions in her own backyard. The River Thames is one of Britain's many waterways contaminated with sewage and agricultural pollution.

“If it looks right, if its smells right, I’ll go in," Fennelly said.

Britain has become notorious as a place where a casual swim could lead to an extended visit to the toilet, if not the hospital. A torrent of news on dirty water has spilled into next month's election to determine which party controls government for the next four or five years.

While not a top campaign issue, it stinks of a larger problem: Britain's aging infrastructure — from aging schools, hospitals and prisons to pothole-riddled streets.

Bad water is decades in the making, tied to the privatization of waterworks under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1989 and to fiscal austerity after the 2008 financial crisis that slashed budgets for watchdogs and others.

The British public discovered the extent of the mess during the COVID-19 pandemic as outdoor recreation such as canoeing and wild swimming took off. The sight and smell of feces, toilet paper and other waste in streams and on beaches led to an outcry, along with clean water campaigns by some London newspapers.

“We are suffering with shockingly poor infrastructure as a consequence of long-term underinvestment by water utilities who appeared more interested in paying shareholder dividends,” said Nick Kirsop-Taylor, an environmental policy lecturer at the University of Exeter. “There’s far more to it than just that, though … it’s the culture of poor regulation.”