More than 1,000 sewage dumps in our watercourses over the past year
WASTE PUMPED INTO HENMORE 82 TIMES IN 2021
DATA from the UK Environment Agency has revealed that nearly 16,000 sewage dumps took place in Derbyshire in 2021 - and more than 1,000 of these were in Ashbourne’s watercourses.
By law, water utilities in the county are allowed to release sewage into waterways after extreme weather events, such as heavy rain, to stop the sewage system from backing up and flowing back up pipes into peoples’ homes.
Sewer storm overflows are located along Derbyshire’s rivers, and these include the Henmore Brook, the River Dove and the Bentley Brook.
All of Ashbourne’s rivers are managed by Severn Trent, but other companies dumping waste upstream add to the burden, and the latest figures show sewage was dumped into Derbyshire’s most-affected river, the Derwent nearly 5,000 times in 2021, totalling more than 36,000 hours of outflow.
These were by four different water companies - Severn Trent Water, United Utilities, Yorkshire Water, and Northumbrian Water.
However, according to the website “Top of the Poops” the River Dove saw 706 sewage dumps in 2021, totalling 6,095 hours of outflow, while the Bentley Brook saw 182 - 1,473 hours.
And the Henmore, which runs through the heart of Ashbourne and alongside the town’s main play area, saw 82 dumps over the year, totalling 323 hours of outflow.
The Derbyshire Dales ended up topping the charts for the district with the most dumps; a total of 3,825 (36,389 hours).
Close behind was Amber Valley (2,447), 16,527 hours; North East Derbyshire (1,555), 10,205 hours; and Bolsover (1,420), 11,758 hours.
A spokesman for Severn Trent said: “We’re passionate about making a positive impact on the communities and the environment where we live and work.
“Our region’s rivers are currently the healthiest they have been since the Industrial Revolution and we’ve been consistently recognised as a leading UK water company and awarded the very highest four star status by the Environment Agency because of the care we take with our rivers and the environment.
“Combined Sewage Overflows, which are used in storm conditions to prevent flooding in customer homes and businesses, account for 3% of rivers not achieving good ecological status.
“We’re already working hard to use overflows less and we’re investing £100m a year to go even further in improving rivers so that nature can continue to thrive and as part of our Get River Positive approach we intend to make sure that our storm overflows and sewage treatment works do not harm rivers, based on the Environment Agency measures. “Agriculture and land management are the biggest contributors to rivers and other water courses not achieving good ecological status, accounting for 36% of all river pollutions.
“While we aren’t responsible for their actions, we are redoubling our efforts to help farmers to care for rivers, our catchment management team already works in partnership with farmers, landowners and stakeholders across our region to protect drinking water quality and we also offer grants to support farmers and continue to work closely with them on initiatives to improve the impact on the environment.
“We’ve also recruited a team of River Rangers to help educate communities and monitor rivers and, as part of our £566million Green Recovery Programme - the biggest investment of any water company in our green future, we’ll be the first water company to create bathing standard rivers in the UK.”
We intend to make sure that our storm overflows and sewage treatment works do not harm rivers. Severn Trent