As this year’s bathing season gets underway, Southern Water is marking the occasion with an update on the work that’s been happening on the Isle of Wight since last year’s launch the £31.5million Bathing Water Enhancement Programme.
Southern Water has been working with colleagues at the Isle of Wight Council to help improve the water quality at Shanklin, which is one of the beaches benefiting from a multi-million-pound investment across the region to bring 7 bathing waters’ quality up to ‘Excellent’ standard by 2020.
Improvements made in Shanklin so far include:
- no public misconnections were found in Shanklin
- looking at agricultural measures along with colleagues from the Council and Natural England
- upgrades to selected pumping stations are needed and a schedule has been drawn up to get the works underway shortly
- the storage capacity at Shanklin is being investigated to decide if an increase is necessary or if the current network has sufficient to protect bathing water quality
- the sewer maintenance and replacement programme has already started and so far, most projects identified have been completed
Chris O’Grady, Southern Water’s Senior Project Manager for the Bathing Water Enhancement Programme, said:
“We’re delighted with the progress we’re making in improving the quality of our magnificent seven’s bathing waters.
“It’s a ground-breaking project and is the result of how we’re responding to our customers’ wishes for us to help boost more bathing waters in the region up to Excellent standard. We’ve completed a large portion of the misconnections work and have already begun many different aspects of our other work.
“We’re also excited to be starting work on another 17 bathing waters which will collectively see a £1.5million investment to boost their bathing waters as well.
“Our local authority partners have been immensely supportive of the project, and we’re all really proud of what we’ve achieved together. The programme is something we were delighted to do; after all, our 700 miles of coastline are where we all live and play, as well as being the lifeblood of many communities whether through tourism, business or leisure.”
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Recent years have seen Southern Water invest millions on its wastewater network in order to reduce its impact on bathing water quality. However, bathing water is also affected by a range of other sources of pollution such as contaminated rainwater running off roads and agricultural land, wastewater from privately-owned treatment works and other private assets, boats and animals on the beach such as dogs and seabirds.
Beaches at Cowes, Whitecliff Bay and Yaverland are also set to receive some additional funding to allow for misconnection surveys and correction work, signage to encourage dog owners to clean up after their pets and various measures to reduce the impact from birds.
The programme will see all major works across the board completed by April 2019.
