19.—(1) The promoter may use any watercourse or any public sewer or drain for the drainage of water in connection with the construction, operation or maintenance of the authorised works and for that purpose may lay down, take up and alter pipes and may, on any land within the Order limits or in any street along which any authorised street tramway is authorised to be laid, make openings into, and connections with, the watercourse, sewer or drain.
(2) Any dispute arising from the exercise of the powers conferred by paragraph (1) to connect to or use a public sewer or drain is to be determined as if it were a dispute under section 106 (right to communicate with public sewers) of the Water Industry Act 1991(1).
(3) The promoter must not discharge any water into any watercourse, public sewer or drain except with the consent of the authority to which it belongs; and such consent may be given subject to such terms and conditions as the authority may reasonably impose but must not be unreasonably withheld.
(4) The promoter must not make any opening into any public sewer or drain except in accordance with plans approved by, and under the superintendence (if provided) of, the authority to which the sewer or drain belongs, but such approval must not be unreasonably withheld.
(5) The promoter must not, in the exercise of the powers conferred by this article, damage or interfere with the bed or banks of any watercourse forming part of a main river.
(6) The promoter must take such steps as are reasonably practicable to secure that any water discharged into a watercourse or public sewer or drain under the powers conferred by this article is as free as may be practicable from gravel, soil or other solid substance or oil or matter in suspension or any other potentially polluting material.
(7) Nothing in this article overrides the requirement for an environmental permit under regulation 12(1)(b) (requirement for environmental permit) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016(2).
(8) In this article—
(a)“public sewer or drain” means a sewer or drain which belongs to a sewerage undertaker, the Environment Agency, an internal drainage board, a local authority, or a harbour authority within the meaning of the Harbours Act 1964(3);
(b)“watercourse” includes all docks, rivers, streams, ditches, drains, cuts, culverts, dykes, sluices, sewers and passages through which water flows, except a public sewer or drain; and
(c)other expressions used both in this article and in the Water Resources Act 1991(4) have the same meaning as in that Act.
1991 c. 56. Section 106 was amended by sections 35(1) and (8) and 43(2) of, and Schedule 2 to, the Competition and Service (Utilities) Act 1992 (c. 43), sections 36(2) and 99 of the Water Act 2003 (c. 37) and paragraph 16(1) of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 (c. 29).