Sewage spills blamed as sickness from swimming soars

More than twice as many people reported becoming sick from outdoor swimming this year compared to 2021-22, according to data compiled by Surfers Against Sewage.

The organisation’s data showed 1,924 people said they got sick from coastal and river swimming between October 2022 and September 2023, while 720 reported becoming ill during the same period the previous year.

Of the illnesses reported, 60% of those people were after entering waters classified as “excellent” by bathing water standards set by the Environment Agency.

Surfers Against Sewage’s annual water quality report highlighted discharges from storm overflow points based on data from event duration monitors (EDMs) that showed 399,864 spills, which the report described as “likely a huge underestimation”.

Louise Reddy policy officer with the organisation told the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for water that Surfers Against Sewage found 143 “potentially illegally” discharges in 2022 when CSOs spilled without rain.

She said the prevalence of dry spills pointed to a “systemic problem” with existing sewer network systems.

This was countered by Karen Murrell, principal consultant at Water Research Centre (WRC) and a fellow of the Chartered institute of water and environmental management (CIWEM) who called for a catchment level approach to understanding risks from CSOs as well as possible solutions.

Failing to manage water at catchment level could waste money and time as problems may recur in five or ten years, Murrell said.

“Addressing individual CSOs without considering what is happening at all other parts of a catchment means we are going to spend vast sums of money badly,” she added.

“Unpicking the regulatory complexity” around drainage could help water companies to stop surface water entering and overwhelming sewers, Murrell told the APPG. She explained water companies had the ultimate responsibility of processing excess water even if it had runoff of highways or agricultural land – either of which may be sources of pollutants.

She echoed industry-wide calls for a ban on wet wipes containing plastic and better awareness of how to dispose of fats oils and grease (FOGs) and called out the limits to what could be expected of consumers to know or care about.

The “goodwill of a motivated few” members of the public would be insufficient to protect drainage systems when too many households continued to “use a toilet as a watery bin”.

“We can see products that are harming the environment and expect the water companies to deal with it.”

Reedy said Surfers Against Sewage was also supporting a ban of wipes and materials that could cause environmental harm.

Water minister Rebecca Pow said government agreed with SAS that the volume of pollution in water was “utterly unacceptable”.

Water UK responded to the SAS report: “We should all be able to safely enjoy our local beaches, rivers and other waterways. Water industry investment has transformed coastal bathing water with a sevenfold increase in the number of beaches achieving an ‘excellent’ from the Environment Agency since the 1990s.

“We now need to do the same for our rivers and inland bathing areas to ensure we meet public expectation. To do this companies are proposing to invest £11 billion over the next seven years to massively reduce storm overflows and radically improve our rivers for bathing and other recreational activities.”