Whether it’s the pale stretch of sand at Mudeford Sandbanks in Dorset or the famous pier in the north Somerset town of Weston-super-Mare, coastlines in the Wessex Water region have lots to offer.
Over the years, Wessex Water has improved sewage treatment processes and upgraded infrastructure – for example at the Poole and Swanage treatment plants – to help ensure compliance with bathing water standards. Last year was the best year for regional water quality, with 89 per cent of beaches achieving the tighter guideline standard of the Bathing Water Directive and 100 per cent passing the mandatory standard.
What is now of growing interest to beach users is the current status of bathing water quality. Historically, water companies have been tight-lipped when combined sewer overflows (CSOs) have been in operation, with only regulators being informed. Today there is a far greater demand for information and transparency, so last year four water companies took part in trials to indicate when overflows had discharged.
Wessex was the first water company to launch a dedicated website to provide visitors with more information about bathing water quality and when CSOs had been in operation. More than 4,000 people used the service in 2011 and Surfers Against Sewage provided the information to update its members through text alerts. Speaking last year, Andy Cummins, campaign director for SAS, said this allowed beach users in the region “to make more informed decisions about how and when they use the water”.
For the current bathing water season, which kicked off on 15 May, Wessex has further developed the service. Since the Easter bank holiday weekend, it has been providing real-time information on its website for 26 of the 47 designated bathing waters in its region. The facility also provides individual bathing water classification from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
This move followed considerable consultation, which started with a workshop at a biannual public health meeting in October 2011. Representatives from local authorities, the Health Protection Agency, the Consumer Council for Water and the Marine Conservation Society provided us with feedback. We carried out separate liaison with SAS and had discussions with the Environment Agency.
The overall view was that last year’s trial had been successful but could be improved upon, particularly by including real-time notification and more amenity waters, such as streams that flow over beaches, which is often where children play.
To provide reliable real-time notifications, Wessex has upgraded telemetry equipment on coastline CSOs to ensure spill information is accurate. A false alarm could result in people choosing not to visit a beach despite bathing water quality being of its usual high standard.
The company has also updated its online facility to make it more interactive, with viewers able to specify the information they wish to see displayed – for example, only showing beaches with no sewer overflows.
Wessex is doing everything it can to better manage its sewerage network to reduce the number of discharges through CSOs, and when discharges do have to be made, it is making it easy for people to know about it.
Ruth Barden, head of environment and conservation at Wessex Water. Wessex Water’s bathing water quality information can be found at www.wessexwater.co.uk/bathingwaters
This article first appeared in Utility Week’s print edition of 18 May 2012.
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