Southern Water storm releases along coast in Adur 'outrageous'

Jeremy Gardner, a Labour councillor representing St Mary’s ward in Shoreham, branded recent releases of untreated sewage and rainwater along the coast as ‘outrageous’.

In a social media post, he explained that the releases on Tuesday (August 16) went on for longer than he originally thought during heavy rains.

“Yesterday I said Southern Water had opened one of its river Adur sewage outfalls for 36 minutes,” he wrote, “It turns out they opened four outfalls in Shoreham and Southwick, pouring sewage into our waters for an astonishing 5hrs 34mins. Outrageous.”

The Tweet has been shared thousands of times with residents posting pictures and videos of similar incidents in the comments.

When asked by one commenter what he was doing to help remedy the situation, Mr Gardner said he had asked the water company to ‘improve our sewerage’.

But, he added: “It’s the Government that has the power to force the companies to do the right thing.”

Meanwhile Emma Evans, Adur’s executive member for environment and leisure, added: “It is totally unacceptable that any sewage should be discharged into the sea in Adur, no matter the weather conditions.

“Residents and visitors should be able to take a dip, get on a paddle board or just paddle without having to check that pollution hasn’t been dumped into the water.

“We will be writing to Southern Water to ask for a meeting as a priority to find out what action the company will be taking to prevent this happening again.”

Data from Southern Water’s ‘Beachbuoy’ monitoring website suggests that releases took place in Southwick and Shoreham for more than five and a half hours on Tuesday.

A statement issued by Southern Water explained: “[Tuesday’s] thunder storms brought heavy rain which fell onto parched ground and couldn’t absorb surface run-off, meaning that more rain than usual overwhelmed our network.

“This led to some overflows – which are used to protect homes, schools, businesses and hospitals from flooding – spilling excess water into the sea in parts of West Sussex.

“These discharges are heavily diluted and typically 95 per cent of them are rainwater.

“We are dedicated to significantly reducing storm overflows and are running innovative pilot schemes across the region to reduce the amount of rainfall entering our combined sewers by 2030.”

Such releases, known as Combined Storm Overflows (CSOs) are carried out when sewers become overwhelmed by rainwater and run-off – something known as ‘hydraulic overload’.

The excess rainwater, which can become mixed with untreated sewage, is released into waterways in order to prevent flooding.

CSOs can be done legally but last year Southern Water was fined £90 million for more than 6,900 illegal discharges.

The company’s performance over the last year was recently branded as ‘terrible across the board’ by Environment Agency chair Emma Howard Boyd.

This has caused anger and prompted calls for further investment in infrastructure – something Southern Water hopes to address through its 25-year Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan (DWMP).

One of the key goals is to stop excessive rainwater entering the system in the first place.

Have your say on Southern Water’s investment plan by September 5 here: https://www.southernwater.co.uk/dwmp/have-your-say