Water industry free to poison beaches

From The Sunday Times
August 3, 2008
Unregulated overflow pipes allow companies to pour sewage onto Britain’s coastline
Jon Ungoed-Thomas

As you drive along the B3301 in north Cornwall, you come across the rocks and golden sands of Godrevy, overlooking St Ives Bay. It is among the finest beaches in Britain but on some days there is an unmistakable odour: sewage.
“You can smell it sometimes when you cross the Red River, which flows onto the beach,” said Richard Hardy, campaign director of Surfers Against Sewage. “Families sometimes play in the water without realising there is a serious risk of getting ill.”

About a mile upstream along the Red River is a sewage works where the overflow pipes are cut into the river banks. During heavy rain, flood waters and raw sewage surge out of the overflow pipes, down the Red River and on to Godrevy beach.
To veteran users of the beach, there is usually one fail-safe indicator of a pollution incident: cotton buds. “Where there are cotton buds, there is sewage, because of the numbers that are flushed down toilets,” Hardy said. “We pick hundreds of them off the beach.”
According to European Union water quality standards, Godrevy’s water enjoys high levels of cleanliness. However, only 20 tests are conducted during the bathing season and they often fail to detect the sporadic pollution from sewage overflows.
The case of Godrevy highlights a threat to the water industry’s £10 billion drive to improve the cleanliness of Britain’s beaches. There are hundreds of beaches around the country that, like Godrevy, might at times have raw sewage running across their sands because of the wetter weather and a sewage system “at bursting point”.
While the water industry has been praised for improving the cleanliness of coastal waters – shutting most of the raw sewage outfalls off the coast – about one in four beaches still fails to qualify for the EU’s top category.
The Marine Conservation Society (MCS), which produces the Good Beach Guide, wants to see stricter controls on sewage overflows which can still blight many of the country’s beaches. It has also discovered Britain has a network of about 3,500 sewage overflows operating on the country’s rivers and along some sections of coast without any environmental conditions. This means they can spew out unlimited amounts of sewage without risk of prosecution.
The number of beaches recommended by MCS dropped by 10% last year. This is partly attributed to agricultural pollution, but also the overflow of sewage in wet weather. According to data compiled by the society, more than 100 beaches that have regulated sewage overflow outlets had declining water quality in 2007, compared with the previous year.
One of those beaches was Whitburn beach, Sunderland. Residents complain it is regularly blighted by sewage and related debris. The pipe that carries storm water and sewage out to sea is several hundred yards offshore but, it is claimed, pollution washes back to the beach.
A local authority report of an incident last April reported 500 items of sewage debris strewn along the promenade and beach-front. Robert Latimer, 64, who lives on the seafront, said: “You get sewage everywhere. They were only meant to use this outfall 20 times a year, but sewage is coming out all the time.” Another beach that has seen its water quality decline is the shoreline at Instow, at the confluence of the River Torridge and the Taw estuary in north Devon. It was one of the few beaches to fail the legal minimum water quality standards last year.
Farming effluent is partly blamed for the decline, but the beach also has a sewage overflow. It may also be adversely affected by overflows from the Torridge. Data obtained by MCS reveals that the river has five sewage overflows that have no environmental limits on the amount of sewage they can discharge.
Britain’s unregulated sewer overflow pipes are predominantly on the river network and are a throwback to when the water industry was privatised in 1989. At that time, there were more than 20,000 sewage overflow outlets and they were granted “deemed consent” as an interim measure to ensure the assets of the new companies were lawful. It has now emerged that 3,500 of these sewage outlets are still operating without any environmental conditions.
As well as the Torridge, rivers with unregulated sewage overflows include the Thames, the Cherwell in Oxfordshire, the Don in South Yorkshire and Calder in Lancashire. The Anglers’ Conservation Association (ACA) is also calling for tough legal restrictions to be placed on these overflows.
Since The Sunday Times’s Water Rats campaign highlighted the devastating impact of river pollution at the time of water privatisation, water quality in rivers has significantly improved, partly because of improved environmental practices, but also because of the decline of heavy industry.
However, the unregulated sewage overflows in effect mean water companies can pollute watercourses without risk of prosecution. The ACA says a pollution leak in June 2005 when hundreds of fish were killed by sewage in a river near Manchester was never pursued in the courts because the overflow operated by United Utilities was one of those with “deemed consent”.
United Utilities was unable to trace details of the pollution incident this weekend, but the Environment Agency said the fact the overflow had deemed consent was just one of the reasons a prosecution was not pursued. In a similar leak, in the summer of 2006, fish on the River Don were described as jumping out of the water “gasping for breath” and thousands were killed. The overflows operated by Yorkshire Water were also subsequently discovered to have deemed consent and there was no prosecution.
The ACA says the Environment Agency is failing adequately to tackle the water industry over pollution. In a submission to the agency, it has warned that pollution from overflows had led to a “reduction in fish” and the routine sight of “physical residue of sewage discharges hanging on bankside vegetation”.
The agency said this weekend that the overflows with deemed consents were not considered to be causing serious pollution, but new restrictions would be imposed on them. Chris Chubb, discharge consents policy manager for the agency, said overflow pipes were being replaced or improved where possible.
Additional reporting: Georgia Warren
Waste law
One of the most unsightly and irritating sights on Britain’s coast is sewage or related debris dumped by boats.
Under international maritime law ships are prohibited from discharging raw sewage within 12 miles of the coast. (Beyond that it is not considered a pollution risk.) If the waste has been treated it must be dumped at least three miles offshore.
Ships must be fitted with a sewage treatment plant or holding tank.
The maritime laws apply only to vessels that carry more than 15 people. Pleasure craft are subject to Environment Agency regulations and local harbour bylaws.
In tidal waters there is no blanket rule against dumping of sewage, as effluent may quickly be dispersed, but harbour bylaws often prohibit it.