Raw Sewage in our Rivers.. 💩

[Hereford Voice]

Sewage is discharged into rivers across the UK and Ireland on a daily basis. This isn’t an isolated problem; it occurs up and down the country, affecting urban city centre rivers and pristine chalk streams alike.

This map below shows where the sewerage network discharges treated effluent and overflows of untreated effluent and storm water into rivers in England & Wales. Avoid entering the water immediately downstream of these discharges and avoid the overflows (brown circles), especially after it has been raining.

The 'brown circles' represent sewer storm overflows and emergency overflows in the River Wye which have monitoring equipment (Event Duration Monitoring) installed to record how often they discharge. The bigger the circle the more spills have occured.

Sewer storm overflows (also called combined sewer overflows or CSOs) are designed to relieve the pressure on the combined rainfall and sewerage network during heavy rainfall, preventing flooding of streets and houses. CSOs discharge the excess rainwater mixed with raw sewage straight in to rivers or sea, bypassing the wastewater treatment process temporarily. Therefore it is advised to avoid entering the water directly downstream of these discharge points, especially after rainfall.

Many wastewater treatment works have large storm tanks, which collect this untreated sewage and rainwater before it enters the river, and then treat it later, once the water levels in the treatment works have dropped. Pumping station emergency overflows are designed to operate only when equipment or power failure occurs, so they should not operate due to heavy rainfall.

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