Sewage has flooded into the River Calder in West Yorkshire as four suitcases dumped into a sewer were found blocking a drain on Wednesday.
Yorkshire Water said it found a cover had been removed and the luggage had been “pushed into the network” at Albion Mills, Horbury, causing wastewater to back up and spill out via an overflow.
The firm said it took them three hours to remove the items and return the sewer to working order due to the amount of wastewater that had backed up behind the blockage.
Miles Cameron, head of customer field services at Yorkshire Water, said: “This incident illustrates the impact people can have by using the sewer network at a dumping ground for unwanted items. We believe a cover was removed to allow these items to be disposed of into the sewer.
He added: “It is vital people do not use the sewer network as a way of getting rid of unwanted items. Foreign object cause blockages that can lead to wastewater escaping the network in properties and gardens, the local environment and watercourses, as happened here.”
This comes after an activist group said in May a river in a UK seaside town was declared “ecologically dead” following a series of sewage spills.
Flowing through the Dorset town of Lyme Regis and into the sea, the River Lim saw a three-fold increase in the amount of human waste pumped into it in less than a year.
According to River Lim Action Group, South West Water (SWW) discharged 2,200 hours’ worth of sewage spills into the river in 2022. A once lively ecosystem, it was famously populated with trout, eels and kingfishers.
