To mark the start of bathing water season (15th May) Southern Water is launching a campaign to celebrate our coastline – and help people play a part in keeping beaches beautiful.
Bathing waters along our region’s 700 miles of coastline have never been cleaner in recent times. However, the way bathing water quality is measured changed in 2015 and standards are now twice as strict as before – which is why Southern Water is working even more closely with local councils and the Environment Agency to address issues which affect bathing water quality.
As well as celebrating the 83 beautiful bathing waters in the region, the ‘Beauty of the beach’ campaign aims to educate people about what impacts bathing water quality and give them the power to protect their beaches by taking some simple steps.
David Tyler, Southern Water’s environment strategy manager, said:
“Over recent years, we have invested millions of pounds to reduce the impact of our wastewater network 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, boats and animals on the beach such as dogs and seabirds.
“We live and work in the region and are proud of our local area – that’s why we want to work with people to help make our beaches the very best that they can be,” he added.
‘Beauty of the Beach’ will be running May – September across Southern Water’s social media channels, including an online poll to find the region’s favourite beach. To vote in the battle of the beaches head to bit.ly/1WefsaX.
Southern Water is also leading a long-term plan to improve bathing water quality across its region. The company have committed to work with other agencies, local communities and landowners to bring all coastal waters at bathing beaches in the region up to the standard required to achieve Blue Flag status by 2040.
In January Southern Water announced the first phase of this work – known as the Bathing Water Enhancement programme.
The innovative project to improve bathing water quality will see Southern Water work to find and fix sources of pollution preventing seven bathing waters in the region from achieving ‘excellent’ standard – one of the measures required for bathing waters to gain ‘Blue Flag’ status.
A specialist team from Southern Water carried out a rigorous selection process to shortlist 21 bathing waters from the 83 across the region for further investigation and are now working to understand the causes of pollution at each of the 21 bathing waters shortlisted to identify which of them, and the communities they serve, would benefit most from intervention.
For more information on bathing water quality: www.southernwater.co.uk/media/default/PDFs/bathing-water.pdf.
