Water firms use sewage monitors that don’t work!

SWIMMERS at seaside resorts could be unwittingly putting their health at risk because water companies are failing to report thousands of sewage spills.

The amount of raw waste which is pumped into seas and rivers after heavy rain should be picked up by electronic devices called event duration monitors.

These monitors are a key tool that the Government has said will help tackle the scandal of sewage being dumped in tourist and bathing hotspots.

But analysis of Environment Agency data by the Liberal Democrats shows that several water firms have either installed faulty monitors which only work 10 per cent of the time – or have not installed them at all.

Long Rock in Cornwall, Littlehampton in West Sussex and Lee- on-the- Solent in Hampshire are among the popular resorts where no monitors are installed. In Seaford, East Sussex, the sewage monitor was only working a third of the time – raising fears of the health risks posed by swimming.

Across the country there were 1,802 monitors which did not work for at least 90 per cent of the time and 1,717 overflows that did not have a monitor.

In total, one in four spillages went unmonitored last year.

The company with the worst record was Anglian Water, for

which half (49 per cent) of sewage discharges were either not measured due to faulty monitors or there were no monitors installed. This was followed by South West Water (30 per cent) and Severn Water (29 per cent).

The firms did not respond to requests for comment.

Lib Dem rural affairs spokesman Tim Farron said: ‘These

water companies could be guilty of gross negligence by failing to install sewage monitors. This is a national scandal.’

Storm overflows are designed to release excess water from the system into rivers or the sea during prolonged rainfall to ensure they are not overwhelmed. Water companies should only do this under strictly permitted conditions.

Water minister Steve Double said the Government would soon be publishing its plan to

tackle sewage overflows. He added: ‘We have been clear that water companies’ reliance on overflows is unacceptable and they must significantly reduce how much sewage they discharge as a priority.’

More than one trillion litres of water were lost in leaks by water companies last year, according to provisional figures from Ofwat. The regulator said around 2,923million litres a day were lost – equivalent to 1.06trillion litres a year.