The first-ever comprehensive waterways map has laid bare the ‘horrifying’ extent of England’s sewage crisis, highlighting Britain’s dirtiest beaches where swimming could make you unwell.
Dubbed ‘The Sewage Map’, this real-time tool was crafted by Dr Alex Lipp and Jonny Dawe to highlight river sections downstream of storm overflow sewage discharges.
The map is dotted with a ‘poo’ emoji, designed by Jonny, to mark live sewage dischargers, while a red exclamation mark flags spills within the last 48 hours, and a green tick signifies no reported spills in that timeframe. Although Scotland and Wales have different regulations and their data isn’t currently included, there are hopes to incorporate it in the future.
Individuals can look at the map and the beaches near them to find out of there is a current spill or a recent spill. For example, off the coast of Teignmouth in Devon, a sewage discharge has been taking place for the past 71 hours.
Dr Alex, an Earth and environmental scientist and lecturer at University College London’s Department of Earth Sciences, expressed: “Pollution of waterways globally is major issue impacting on human health as well as freshwater and marine ecosystems.”
The latest figures from the Environment Agency paint a grim picture; in 2023, sewage systems overflowed, spewing untreated waste for an alarming total of 3.6 million hours. Such untreated sewage discharges release a cocktail of pollutants including microplastics, illegal substances, farm waste, and human effluent into our natural surroundings.
Just last May, a group of leading engineers and scientists highlighted the escalating public health dangers due to human faeces contaminating British rivers, advocating for more comprehensive testing. These contaminants include bacteria like salmonella and E.coli, responsible for causing severe diarrhoea and vomiting, as well as viruses such as hepatitis A which can lead to liver infection. And it’s not just people who suffer — marine life is also at risk.
According to the marine charity Surfers Against Sewage, sewage pollution can spark massive algae blooms, stripping water bodies of oxygen and causing mass deaths among riverine and marine organisms. As campaigners push for immediate measures to address this crisis, it’s revealed that the UK’s biodiversity has been halved due to human impact.
The creation of an informative map tracking river health began as a joint effort between Alex, during his time as a researcher in Oxford, and Jonny, a web developer. Their project was propelled by new regulations requiring water companies to disclose their sewage discharge information.
Alex commented: “Let’s be clear, the water companies have not chosen to unveil this data, legislation came into force which meant they had to release it. The actual data itself is really limited: all the data tells you is if an overflow is spilling or if it isn’t. But we don’t know what it is spilling.
“That’s the nature of the monitors in use, for instance, if you want to know how much of an impact these are having on the river system, we need more data, and we don’t currently have that.
“The companies have to release data every year – but it’s just the annual return: the total numbers of hours of spill for each monitor. But what we want to know is was there a spill last week and how does this correspond to rainfall.
“It’s a big shame as I want to see if I can match up spill records with water quality, but we cannot compare the two if they don’t reveal the true data.”
Usually, this wastewater should head straight to sewage treatment facilities, but these systems can become overwhelmed during heavy downpours, leading to potential flooding of homes, roadways, and open spaces alongside the overload of sewage stations.
The system is intentionally designed to cope with overflow by discharging excess wastewater into the sea and rivers from combined sewer overflows (CSOs) during heavy rainfall. However, Ofwat, the industry regulator, has found that some water companies have been engaging in dry spilling – “routinely releasing sewage” even when there’s no heavy rain, due to mismanagement of their wastewater treatment plants, which is a breach of their permits.
Alex added: “It’s really bad, most water companies do not provide easy access to the history of their spill data. If you wanted to look into whether a river had been spilled into over the last week, or months, you cannot.”
He commended Thames Water for providing third-party access to their spill history two years ago, despite criticism from other companies worried about looking bad. “It’s really valuable information for a lot of people, including campaigners working on protecting their rivers.
“It means for every other river, all we know is their current status, and the last spill – then we work out how long its been going on. But we are not able to go back further.
“This is something which needs a lot of attention: data is one thing but we use models to make decisions from data.
“And we don’t have open transparency on these models – so we spend billions of private and public money on the models, but its not clear to work out what they’re really doing.”
On October 23, 2024, the UK government initiated a Water Commission to attract investment for revitalising the nation’s water infrastructure. The commission’s findings are expected to inform new legislation aimed at reforming the water sector to better serve the public and the environment.
Thanks to the Government’s legislation, water companies are now required to release more data and deploy water quality monitors alongside water flow monitors. This increased transparency is expected to lead to better insight into the issue.
