Island Echo always welcomes letters to the editor, which may of course not reflect the views of the publication and its staff.
Letter to the editor – 4th December 2022
“It is important to recognise that neither the Environment Agency nor Southern Water can give accurate and current data to the bather to ensure people know the level of risk of going into the sea on a particular day if testing isn’t done when discharges happen. EA sampling typically occurs for 5 to 20 days during the 138-day bathing season and the samples take several days to analyse, given changes occur overnight, nobody actually knows what it’s like ‘right now’.
“A stormwater discharge is not just excess rainwater it is a mix of dilute raw untreated human excrement, roughly between 5 and 10%. This contains pathogens harmful to our health. Typically, but not always, these discharges happen after rainfall.
Article continues below this advertisement “To illustrate with a few real-life samples taken in 2021 by Hayling Sewage Watch, these clearly show E-Coli at c.890 cfu/100ml for multiple days during the school holidays where the bathing water classification says it should be less than 250 cfu/100ml. So over 3 times the maximum.
“Southern Water would like us to rely on their new Beachbuoy system of warnings.
“This is supposed to give us accurate and timely forecasts of how sewage discharges affect our bathing waters. However, research by campaigners has shown that Beachbuoy data is being routinely manipulated and in some cases data is being deleted, effectively reducing discharge duration, which makes bather warnings less likely. Trust in Southern Water’s Beachbuoy over recent months has significantly collapsed, and with good reason.
“Beachbuoy is now suffering from serious and significant bather misinformation as a result of new but flawed tidal and weather modelling.
“Multiple bathing waters in Hampshire and the IoW have been showing “all clear” when they should have been showing RED flags. Southern Water has recognised these seriously flaws and their CEO told local campaigners and several MP’s that they will now commission an ‘independent’ review of their system. Yet so far there is no sign of that happening. Instead, we see misleading articles like this one.
Article continues below this advertisement “Across the Southern Water region, it is estimated that close to 1 MILLION minutes of “genuine” stormwater discharges have occurred so far in 2022.
“Much of that was in the Solent and Isle of Wight beach areas. In addition, Southern Water has some 407,000 discharge minutes that have been dismissed as “false alarms” or fake news. This is because the whole system relies on remote sensing technology at the discharge points which Southern Water themselves don’t trust, which means we can’t trust it either! One assumes the Environment Agency (EA) don’t trust it either.
“It is shocking that Southern Water stoops so low to even mention the 2022 bathing season as good news when it still saw half of the 2021 sewage discharges during what was a massive drought with a hose pipe ban!
“But it is not all bad news, after Macquarie Asset Management became a major shareholder, Southern Water said they are investing over £56 million in water and wastewater services on the Isle of Wight. Of course, that adds in the need for increased fresh water supplied due to run out soon, as well as sewage. We are also yet to see how much is taken out in new dividends and inflated CEO salaries. No wonder even our own MP says he is only welcoming this news ‘with caution’. But plans are in place to make some things a bit better by 2050. So, although not in my lifetime, others younger than me may see some improvement in time.
“Remember, Southern Water is the company fined a record £90 million for illegally dumping sewage in the Solent and other coastal waters. They pleaded guilty to 51 breaches of environmental law between 2010 and 2015.
“And there seems to have been many more since then.
Andrew
Bembridge, Isle of Wight
That’s a brilliant article Andrew, what can we do to put and end to this?
Great post Andrew. Thanks. We need to get the water cos to do their job, not just payout to shareholders. write to your MP and tell him to actually do something
and – your point is what exactly…
this type of discharge into the sea will continue indefinitely, unless you want that sewage back pressuring into your toilet and on your floors in your home.
back in the 1970’s the publicly owned water board used to pump out sewage into the sea from the pipe that was right next to Ryde Pier, on the western side at high tide. As a kid, I used to see the toilet paper floating, when I was standing in the water. Never got ill though – i might add.
then again, less houses, less people, less pressure on the system back then, however, nowadays, due to the unfettered and stupid population increases on the island, the issue is still the same, just more, under private ownership of southern water.
Yeah, way better to trust non-profit SAS rather than actual EA – my 45% (well… 60% between £100-125k) tax hard at work :F
This is one company that needs to come back under government control, they should never have privatised this service especially as little effort has been made in the past decades in diverting raw sewerage into correct areas other than the sea. It has little to do with flood water, it is just poor management and investment into the infrastructure and led mainly by Shareholders bonuses. Southern Water is NOT fit for purpose.