Southern Water Alters Pollution Alert Map, Saying Criteria Has Changed

A report in The Guardian newspaper has revealed Southern Water has made changes to its pollution alert tool, to ensure there are fewer red alerts when raw sewage discharges into the sea.

The tool, says The Guardian, will now not issue a red cross indicating a sewage discharge if, for example, the discharge was made 5km out at sea and was just a small discharge, therefore not affecting bathers.

The water company says, following changes this month,  it will now issue a red warning "based on the location of the outfall, the duration of the release and tidal conditions at the time".

However, Mike Owens of Hayling Sewage Watch told the newspaper he'd analysed the data on Southern Water's map on Wednesday morning and found 15 out of 83 beaches marked blue (meaning safe) would have been red before the latest software update, because outfalls were discharging raw sewage nearby.

He told The Guardian:

“This is a question of trust in Southern Water to provide accurate, open and transparent information,” said Owens. “They say that they want to improve the user’s experience but manipulating data without giving us detail is most unhelpful and frankly neither open or transparent.

“They say they are using tide and weather and location to determine whether the discharge impacts on water quality on a beach but there are not showing us how they are making the calculation.

“I don’t know how they are doing it and how they have implemented it so quickly.”

He added that for 246 outfalls, 'the company would need to analyse the granular detail for every parameter in making a decision about whether a discharge impacted on water quality – including data for several different tide times, wind speeds and weather'.

“If you multiply those together that is quite an astonishingly large amount of data.”

Martin William, Beachbuoy product owner at Southern Water, told The Guardian:

“This is an important step for the tool, ensuring we provide accurate, fair and clear information to wild swimmers, kayakers, paddleboarders and all users of the beautiful beaches across our region.

“Beachbuoy is leading the way in providing near-real time data about storm releases, but we must ensure it goes further to inform the public about the impacts to the watercourse and not limit their enjoyment of their local bathing water. We’ll never hide data though, with all releases still available on the website.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/14/southern-water-pollution-alert-tool-automatic-red-alerts

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In other news Huw Oxburgh, the Local Democracy Reporter for East Sussex, has reported Rother councillors will debate the causes of sewerage spills on the coast by Bexhill.

The motion, from councillors Richard Thomas (Lib Dem) and Polly Gray (Green), will debated next Wednesday (Sept 21)

It calls on the council to urge Southern Water to make public an investigation into the causes of the equipment failures at the Galley Hill pumping station in August, which led to sewage being discharged into the sea.

If agreed, the motion would also see the council call for compensation and a commitment from the water company to prevent any new incidents by 2027.

A spokesman for Southern Water said:

“Following the incident at our Galley Hill pumping station, Dr Toby Willison, our Director of Quality and Environment, committed to a compensation package.

“We are in close discussion with all relevant stakeholders – including the council – on what this should be and how it could be structured. We are clear that no pollution incident is acceptable to our customers or to us.

“Storm releases, permitted by the Environment Agency, are a necessary safety valve to protect homes schools and hospitals from flooding and are a key part of how the system was designed to operate.

“We are working hard to reduce reliance on this system and our Stormwater Taskforce is leading the industry with five innovative pathfinder scheme which we believe will show we can go further and faster than the government is demanding. Changing this system will require partnership working to keep rain out of our systems.”