Opinion: When is a ‘sewage alert’ not a sewage alert on our beaches?

Anyone familiar with the work of Water Watch in Combe Martin cannot fail to be impressed at what the community have achieved over the past 10 years to improve the bathing water quality at Combe Martin.

The Water Minister, Robbie Moore MP who met with them commented afterwards on how impressive their work was and the depth of understanding that a full catchment approach is needed to tackle water pollution, as all too often, it is not storm overflows that are to blame for poor water quality.

It was great to visit the leaky water butts in Combe Martin which are monitored to hold flow back up the catchment and reduce run off entering the overflows during periods of high rainfall.

I have recently met with swimmers at Hele Bay as well, who are rightly concerned about the decline in their bathing water.

Having met with the Environment Agency (EA) since, this bay is one of their priorities, and they are already running dye tests through the stream, the main source of the pollution, to find out where it is coming from.

But it is quite clear that the South West Water (SWW) assets at this location are not the main source of pollution.

Recently, there has been another incident (there were two over Christmas at Croyde), where due to faults within a sewage treatment plant, there was a six hour power failure and raw or only partially treated sewage has been discharged.

This is completely different to a combined storm overflow which is at least 95 per cent rainwater.

In a situation like this, the EA tests the water and advises against bathing on beaches that may be impacted.

Their information may differ from that of South West Water and Surfers’ Against Sewage (SAS) who only monitor when a storm overflow discharges, with no data at all about what is in the pipe, or the water quality.

The EA will test the water and follow their normal guidance, which is the guidance that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport recommend for water based sports.

I recognise this is hugely confusing for people just wanting to enjoy swimming, surfing and everything else we love to do in the sea here.

I have therefore met with Sports Secretary, Lucy Frazer MP in Westminster to highlight my concerns, as well as discussing them with the Water Minister in North Devon.

I am pushing for all year around testing of our beaches and that all websites giving water quality advice to put out the same information, based on water testing, not a political campaign.

At this time, the best data is from the EA at  https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles. Other websites just say a storm overflow has discharged, but have no information about what was in that discharge and no water quality testing has taken place.

The situation is further confused by the EA recommending two tidal cycles, which SWW also follow. While, SAS choose to keep their self-defined ‘sewage alert’ flag up for 48 hours, despite having no actual data to verify this.

I will continue to push for improvements in data at Westminster to ensure we all know when it is safe to swim, alongside working with all relevant bodies and groups to try and reduce run off and overflows which may impact the water quality of our stunning beaches.

But it is important to note, that when it rains there is run off and we do not know what is in that, most beaches have a river running onto them, which testing is showing is dirtier than what is running out of storm overflows. 

This is why, in my mind, it is vital we test more for certainty, but that we also work on whole catchment approaches rather than screaming ‘sewage alert’ which unfortunately was not shouted when it was actually needed!