A report this week by Surfers Against Sewage painted a damning picture of the state of British waters. Their water report showed that over the summer, sewage was dumped into the most popular surf and swim spots 5,504 times - a total of 15,021 hours.

Since October 2021, the campaigners have issued a total of 9,216 sewage pollution alerts for locations included in the Safer Seas & Rivers Service, 2,053 of which were during the 2022 bathing season alone.

But in addition to sewage overflows into the sea the report HERE showed that over the last year they recorded 146 'dry spills' pouring raw sewage into those same popular surf and swim spots when there had been no rain.

Sewage overflows are only permitted to discharge sewage into the environment during 'exceptional rainfall events'. And water companies are prohibited from making 'dry spills' from sewage overflows when there has been no rainfall.

However there are many reasons that dry spills can happen.

• Groundwater infiltration – pressurised ground water can squeeze its way into pipes (both public and private) and overwhelm the network and require overflows to prevent flooding of the catchments. Surface water ingress caused by tree roots and land movements damaging or fracturing pipes.
• Misconnected private surface water drains placing extra surface water volumes into the networks
• By sewer blockages, caused by improperly disposed wet wipes, fats, oils and grease. These factors simultaneously reduce the capacity of the sewer network, while adding unforeseen, hard to detect, and unpermitted surface water pressures on the drainage system. 
• Drainage time – the size and complexity of the area drained by the sewer and the network itself means some areas take days to drain down after rainfall.
• A failure or an emergency situation – a failure of a pump or a power failure could result in a release event.

 Southern Water was the worst offender, with South West Water in second place.

So it is interesting that the Greens party in Mendip are pushing the council to force every planning application for the thousands of homes expected locally, to be specifically grilled on what happens to the sewage from all the planned homes, in case of wet or dry outages. A proposal was voted through at council level in September.

At the moment there is an assumption that housing developments WILL deal with sewage responsibly and councillors on the planning board can always raise a question about what happens to waste water from the homes. But from now on Wessex Water will have to make a statement on how, and where, sewage will be dealt with.

Meantime SAW reported that in spite of nearly every water company recording a loss for the year ending 31st March 2022, the majority of them still paid out dividends to shareholders totalling £965 million.

And last financial year, water companies paid out a cumulative total of £16.5 million to their CEOs.