Volunteers testing sewage hotspots as Southern Water discharges reach record levels

Tap to watch a video report by ITV News Meridian's James Dunham

Sewage discharges into the South East’s rivers and seas reached record levels in 2023, as Southern Water's infrastructure struggled to cope with heavy rainfall.

Wastewater was pumped into waterways by the company for thousands of hours, in more than 29,000 incidents.

Groups across Kent and Sussex, armed with rubber gloves and mobile chemistry kits, are now regularly testing the quality of water in an effort to give a clearer idea of the scale of the impact discharges are having.

The problem, they say, is detrimental to tourism, swimmers and aquatic life. Their testing has since found harmful levels of bacteria like e-coli in certain spots.

The seaside is Hastings’ biggest asset yet the East Sussex town has faced a sharp increase in spills, with sewage released into the sea 164 times in 2023 up from 96 the year before.

Volunteers there have now been testing the water and told ITV Meridian they found extremely high levels of bacteria on multiple occasions.

Rebecca Sinker, from the group Clean Water Action, is desperate to see the levels of contamination reduce, but wonders why it’s come down to members of the public to monitor levels.

“We're very dedicated. But I would say, why are we doing this? Why do we have to do this? We're really interested in knowing more about our environment, but we shouldn't be doing this unpaid labour.

"That should be the job of the Environment Agency and particularly the private water companies and Southern Water.

Rebecca Sinker from the group Clean Water Action questions why it's come down to volunteers to help deal with this problem.

"The reason the organisation, the group of volunteers got together, was because of Southern Water being fined so much for illegal pollution and sewage releases.

“We’ve had some shocking results. Good quality water should have no higher than 500 colony forming units of bacteria per 100 millimetres.

"But we were getting results that were 1000, 2000, and in one instance, 1 million colony forming units per 100 millimetres. That's 2000 times the acceptable limit.

“We were particularly horrified when we were getting results like that. This is a beautiful part of the world, a beautiful asset that we've got, but you have to second guess every time you go in the water wondering what is floating around you.”

Whitstable in Kent might be 50 miles from Hastings but when it comes to wastewater the picture is similar. There were 118 discharges there last year up from 87 in 2022.

Ten volunteers at SOS Whitstable have been carrying out testing as part of its fight to see improved quality on the North Kent coast.

High levels of bacteria can be caused by multiple factors including sewage discharge, illegal sewage connections, private sewerage and cesspits, road and agricultural run off.

Despite being formed three years ago, the group fears the situation isn’t improving at all.

One of its members Catherine Chapman said: “It’s a massive problem. It’s unbelievable that we are still talking about this.

"You kind of sway between disbelief and outrage all at the same time that you look at this amazing natural resource, and you think about all the technology that we've got in this world today and that they are still just releasing sewage into the sea.

“The environmental impact, the health impacts on mental health is huge. This problem is putting people off going in the water. And it's putting the people off that really need to go in the water.

“The people that it helps with their mental health, the people that it helps with their physical health, those are the ones that really need to be in there and those are the ones it's the most dangerous for.

“I think that they [Southern Water] are investing. However, they should have been doing this over the last 20 years.

"The only reason that we are in this state in the first place is because of the lack of investment for years and years, and now they're just almost trying to make up for lost time and also trying to pass the cost on to us, which flies in the face of this whole thing.”

Southern Water told ITV Meridian it aims to reduce the annual number of pollutions incidents from 483 in 2022 to less than 130 by the end of 2024 and zero by 2040.

The company says it's reduced pollutions by 35% already, despite one of the wettest winters on record, while 22,000 radar devices have been installed across its 45,000km sewer network to proactively detect issues before they become pollutions.

More than £3 billion of capital investment is being made into the system during the 2020-25 regulatory period, the equivalent of more than £1,500 per household.

Further inland concerns have also been raised on the conditions of our rivers.

While parts of the river bank along the Medway is rich with nature, the green surroundings aren’t enough to protect it from wastewater or chemicals used in farming which run off into the water.

The Angling Trust launched the Water Quality Monitoring Network in 2022 to give anglers a greater understanding of the state of the rivers they fish in.

Ian Tucker from the Royal Tunbridge Wells Anglers Society says the problem is deeply personal as he wants to see a world where his grandchildren can fish without being concerned about pollution.

Devoted angler Ian Tucker from the Royal Tunbridge Wells Anglers Society says the pollution's impact is 'very sad'.

He said: “We've now been gathering data for the last 18 months, we really have got a very good picture of how particularly this outflow is affecting the whole of the main buoy catchment, 50 miles of river from here to the sea.

“The telling thing is when you get to summer and the water levels are lower, and you've got the heat and the algae being produced and starving, all the invertebrates and wildlife and fish of oxygen, that's when it really becomes a problem.

“We just care about our environment and keeping the legacy to our grandchildren. So that's why we're doing it. Just to try and get people to understand how poorly this river has been treated over the last few years. And that's that's what's driving us, really.”

Between May and September, the Environment Agency tests the quality of bathing water through a weekly procedure which results in up to 20 samples being recorded from each site.

Campaigners would like to see some form of official testing all year round and at greater areas of coastline because at the moment the water at some beaches isn’t examined at all, despite them being popular with swimmers.

ITV News carried out its own form of testing with help from experts at the University of Kent.

Following a dry spell, we collected eight samples from beaches at Bexhill, St Leonards, Hastings, Whitstable and along the River Medway near Maidstone.

With the expertise of the University of Kent’s testing facilities, the water went under the microscope to check for the presence of any viruses or bacteria, which could be harmful to humans and aquatic life.

While two from the River Medway and one from St Leonards showed some signs of contamination, positively, there wasn’t anything significantly alarming about any of the samples.

The results left senior lecturer Dr Tasos Tsaousis from the School of Biosciences at Kent University's Canterbury campus pleasantly surprised, with the tests on water from the eight locations not showing any alarming levels of bacteria which could have an impact of health.

However, the samples are a small snapshot, and while an encouraging result, Dr Tsaousis thinks more testing is necessary, along with collaboration with academics at institutions such as the University of Kent.

He said: “I was expecting to see contamination and full growth in all the plates. These samples were from one time point on a certain day.

“What we require is to have continuous monitoring from frequent times of the day as well.

"And what I would suggest is for water companies to collaborate with academic institutions like ours to be able to support them and monitor what's going on in, in case we've seen anything of concern, we can notify them and notify the government as well.

Dr Tasos Tsaousis from the School of Biosciences at the University of Kent says there must be greater collaboration between water firms and academics.

“Obviously we want the best for the community and to be able to show if there is any danger. But we want to work together to find solutions to how we deal with infections and disease in not only humans but also animals.

“We can notify them, notify the government as well, because essentially we can't necessarily solve this problem without science. Not only from monitoring what the issues are but also how we solve them."

During its election campaign, Labour pledged to take action on the sewage scandal.

The party says it wants to force all companies to monitor every single water outlet under independent supervision while introducing severe and automatic fines which water companies won't be able to ignore for illegal sewage discharges.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know.