Last week, several British water companies were fined record amounts for polluting rivers and seas with untreated sewage. Britain’s long-standing problem, caused by outdated sewage systems, population growth and a warming climate, has worsened since Brexit, when companies lost chemicals to treat their waste and toilet waste flowed into water bodies largely unchanged.
“Well, did you manage to swim or paddle?” I asked my daughter last weekend, whose university campus is near Gyllyngvase Beach – a Blue Flag beach and one of the most beautiful in Cornwall, on the southwest coast of England. “There are no offers today, the sea is ruined again!” At the beginning of October, a charity ‘Endless Summer Swim’ was due to take place on this beach, but it had to be postponed due to water contamination from sewage, and South West Water, the company that dumped untreated sewage into the sea, was once again forced to apologise to outraged locals.
“A shitty day for swimming in the south,” wrote environmental activist group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) on Twitter, which maintains an interactive map of beach pollution caused by sewage.
The British love their waterways and use them actively all year round – in particular, the popularity of water recreation has increased during and after the pandemic. Beaches are filled with people swimming in the open water, groups of children, surfers, kayakers and other rowers. But before jumping into the water, it is worth taking a closer look and sniffing around.
This summer and unusually warm autumn, hundreds of warnings were (and still are) in effect on Britain’s beaches, advising against swimming due to sewage contamination of coastal waters. The southern and southwestern coasts, where the beaches of Devon and Cornwall are located, suffered the most, but the southeast of England was also affected.
By early September, over 100 beaches had notices in place, and on one Friday in August, sewage was discharged on every beach in Sussex between Brighton and Hastings. In the UK, there is an old sewer system built by Joseph Bazalgette during the Victorian era (construction began in 1858 and was completed in the mid-1870s), which was designed to serve about half of the population that still uses it today. Unlike other countries where sewage is separated, sewage from toilets in the UK flows through the same pipes as rainwater to treatment plants. This system is managed by privatized water and sewerage companies, which under normal conditions perform biological treatment of wastewater in treatment plants.
But when there is too much rainfall, especially after a long period of drought when the soil becomes dry and cannot absorb moisture, the pipes overflow. To prevent flooding of homes and sewer systems, companies are allowed to discharge excess sewage through storm drains into oceans and rivers. Such releases should be rare, occurring only after heavy rainfall. But in practice, it happens much more often, even in dry weather, says Michelle Walker, technical director of The Rivers Trust – a river conservation organization in the UK. This summer and fall, activists and residents protested in many coastal cities to demand an end to sewage dumping.
On October 9th, Whitstable residents gathered at Tankerton Beach to protest against sewage dumping by Southern Water. People who swim or boat in untreated sewage run the risk of coming into contact with infectious pathogens and developing gastrointestinal, respiratory, eye and ear infections, warns Michelle Walker. This is exactly what happened to Tracy Hudson after a swim on the beach at Bexhill, East Sussex. “I stepped into the water up to my waist, looked down, and saw only feces,” she recalls. “There was brownish-green water around me with particles of feces floating in it.” After this incident, Tracy was ill for three weeks with a severe respiratory infection – she is certain that the contaminated water was the cause of her illness. Three days after her unsuccessful swim, the beach at Bexhill was closed due to safety concerns.
“Surfers Against Sewage activist on Newquay beach in southwest England. Along with human waste, antibiotics are entering rivers and oceans through sewage, increasing the risk of antibiotic resistance in the population, warns a team of scientists from the University of Exeter. We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what happens next. The number of offers should remain episodes. The end of the story: Advertising in podcasts.
Last week, Anglian Water was fined £1.2 million for illegally discharging untreated sewage into rivers. In 2021, a record fine of £90 million was imposed on Southern Water, which pleaded guilty to illegally discharging billions of gallons of sewage into coastal waters and rivers in Kent, Sussex and Hampshire. And earlier this year, Southern Water discharged untreated sewage into Tankerton Beach in Whitstable, Kent, for more than 100 hours. Southern Trent, another water company, was fined £1.5 million. The water regulator Ofwat has threatened to remove the limit on the size of fines for individual breaches – currently £250,000 for each illegal discharge, but if the limit is removed, water companies could face fines of up to £250 million. Water utilities have been sharply criticized for failing to invest in upgrading aging infrastructure. Environmentalists point out that almost nothing has been invested in upgrading pipes or expanding wastewater treatment facilities in the past 150 years.
Experts from the Environment Agency are taking water samples in Salisbury, where a burst pipe has caused sewage to leak into the sea and onto the beach. Hugo Tagholm, CEO of SAS (Surfers Against Sewage), claims that water companies are cutting corners for the benefit of “greedy shareholders”. “Our beaches, rivers and lakes are some of our most precious natural resources, but the water companies treat them like open sewers,” he exclaims. All of this has been compounded by the aftermath of Brexit. Britain, which left the European single market as a result of Brexit, faced a chronic shortage of truck drivers to deliver goods from the continent to the country a year ago. The result was a shortage of many goods, including chemicals needed to treat wastewater and bring it up to acceptable quality standards. Unable to quickly resolve the “supply chain disruption” issue, authorities have temporarily waived wastewater treatment standards, allowing companies without the necessary chemicals to dump untreated wastewater into oceans and rivers. According to the Environment Agency, water companies will discharge untreated sewage into waterways 372,533 times in 2021. The actual situation may be even worse: a recent analysis showed that 90% of the sensors on the coast used to monitor emissions are broken. In many places, they are not installed at all, making it impossible to assess the full extent of pollution.
Activist of the Surfers Against Sewage movement at a protest rally in Trafalgar Square, London, August 22, 2022. The bosses of Southern Water and another offender, Thames Water, summoned to the House of Lords, admitted that their behaviour was unacceptable and promised to improve. “There is no doubt that our environmental indicators are absolutely unacceptable,” said Lawrence Gosden, Southern Water’s new chief executive. But water companies are not the only culprits in polluting Britain’s waters. Agriculture also plays its part, say Greenpeace experts. Chickens and cows raised on factory farms produce a lot of manure. As soil conditions deteriorate, more and more chemicals are sprayed on overworked farmland to preserve crops. All of this “cocktail” of animal waste and chemical runoff from farms ends up in the same rivers and seas. The problem of polluted water has now spread beyond the British Isles. In August, three French members of the European Parliament said the United Kingdom was endangering human health, marine life and fisheries by discharging untreated sewage into the English Channel and North Sea. The number of bids should remain the same.
“After Brexit, the UK has freed itself from EU environmental regulations, and now we are concerned about the negative consequences for the quality of the seawater we share with this country, as well as for marine biodiversity, fisheries and shellfish farming,” wrote Pierre Karl-Eskinid, Natalie Luazo and Stefania Ion-Curten to EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius.
French police patrol the beach at Calais. The letter said that while the UK was no longer bound by EU rules, it was still obliged to comply with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Charter on the Protection of Common Waters. “Despite this, the UK has decided to lower water quality standards. This is unacceptable and undermines the efforts made by EU member states over the last 20 years. The UK has a duty to protect the seas that surround it and that we share with it. “The English Channel and the North Sea are not a dumping ground! Dumping untreated sewage into the English Channel and North Sea is against the commitments made by the UK,” Stefania Ioannou-Curten wrote on Twitter. Last year, Conservative MPs were criticized after the House of Lords’ attempt to require water companies to reduce sewage discharges was defeated by 256 votes. Labor’s Lord Hollick, a member of the House of Lords, described the state of the country’s sewage and water infrastructure as appalling after decades of underfunding, and said that according to his committee, it would cost at least £150 billion to fix the problem. Sarah Pernell, a water environment researcher at the University of Brighton, says the most effective long-term solution would be to redesign the entire sewer system in the UK to separate rainwater from sewage. However, she admits that this is too complex and expensive and “least realistic” in the short term. In response to public outrage, the government has mandated that water companies invest £56 billion to upgrade all storm drains by 2050. By 2035, sewers near bathing areas and protected natural areas must be upgraded.
Gyllyngvase Beach in Cornwall, or Gylly as the people of Falmouth call it. Even in the fall, it’s a bustling place-people surf, kayak, swim, practice yoga on the shore, and don’t want to give it up because someone dumped sewage into the ocean. Lawrence Gosden, chief executive of Southern Water, says his company is piloting five projects to separate rainwater from sewage. But reducing pollution by 80 percent will cost about £2 billion. According to Sarah Bentley, chief executive of Thames Water, reducing sewage pollution in London and the Thames Valley will cost about the same. Upgrading the capital’s sewer system is critical for several reasons, including the fact that each new development increases the area covered by concrete and asphalt, adding up to 18% more surface water. This was the cause of the London floods in July 2021. According to Sarah Bentley, London loses “the equivalent of two and a half Hyde Parks a year in terms of permeable surface where rainwater could drain”. Meanwhile, the problem seems to be visible not only from the continent, but even from space. Wan Yapin, the first female taikonaut to walk in space, spoke to British comedian and Guardian columnist Stuart Lee about how Britain looks from the Chinese space station “Tiangong”, which flies about 400 km above the Earth. “Stewart, from Space Britain now looks like a beautiful green jade earring that fell into a box of Chinese noodles full of dog diarrhea,” Van Yapin shared. “No lovely lady would want to wear such a dirty earring, it is very sad!”