Removing the profit motive is the only answer, writes Georgina Ferry. Plus letters from Lyn Howard, Tony Chanter and Elizabeth Hughes

Since the 1989 privatisation of water in England and Wales we have treated water companies as cash machines, our rivers as sewers and our beaches as middens (Dirty water, death and decline: the inside story of a privatisation scandal, 28 February). Water is a monopoly on an essential resource and it once generated all the income necessary to maintain and update the system. Instead, for more than three decades, the profits from our rising bills have gone into the pockets of venture capitalists.

This is one of the biggest robberies perpetrated on an unsuspecting population in recent times. We have lost safe access to the rivers and coastal waters for swimming and other recreation. We are losing the abundant wildlife that used to call those waters home.