The two worst offending sewer discharge points in England and Wales are located in the county of Bridgend.
The sewerage network in regularly discharges treated sewage as well as overflows of untreated sewage and storm water into our rivers. The sewage overflow point at Station Row Pontyrhyl Bridgend discharged 340 times for a combined total of 7,805 hours in 2022.
Bettws Road Llangeinor, also in Bridgend, discharged 350 times for a total of 7,785 hours. That's the equivalent of 324 days straight and is the next highest total. Both of these outlets flow into the Garw river which runs down to the Ogmore which in turn deposits this waste into the Bristol Channel. No other sewer outlet comes comes to these two points in terms of amount of time discharging waste.
WalesOnline recently conducted a special investigation into the pollution from sewage discharges in Wales. You can view this here.
Collectively, there were 384,568 spills from the discharge points last year for a combined total of over 2.3 million hours, according to data from the Environment Agency.
Workington’s Plumbland discharge point was the next most active at 6,896 hours (287 days) and that’s followed by Whissendine Wwtw in Rutland (6,646 hours, or 277 days), St Paul's Road Cso in Wirral (5,582 hours, or 233 days), Lune Street Pumping Station in Lancaster (5,336 hours, or 222 days), and Kirk Bampton in Allerdale (5,124 hours, or 214 days).
You can find the discharge points near you along with how many hours they were used in 2022 using our interactive map. Either scroll around to explore or type in your postcode to zoom into your area:
PLEASE SOMEONE WITH PERMISSION ADD THIS WIDGET: 27153294
Ultimately, the reason that these discharges are happening is because our sewer systems were designed in the Victorian era and simply can’t cope anymore. When it rains the system gets overwhelmed. This leaves two options, either the sewage is released into the rivers or it backs up into people’s homes.
This map shows both the CSOs and the route of the river after the sewage is released:
Professor Steve Ormerod is a professor of ecology at Cardiff University and has been working on water quality for four decades. He said: “The issue is is the amount of money that it would require to fit all of them. The estimate from Welsh Water is, if we were to try and address all 2000 CSOs in Wales, would be somewhere between nine and 14 billion pounds, which is about £5,000 per person, which is non trivial.
“So I think we've got to focus on, we've got a prioritize the ones that are the worst performing, where there is real evidence that there is a local impact on what is coming out of them. “
Commenting on the pollution in the river Garw a spokeswoman for Welsh Water said: "“We are always very sorry for any environmental harm that we cause linked to delivering our wastewater services. We absolutely understand and accept public concern about any sewage pollution impacting our rivers and so improving river water quality is our absolute priority.
“The total removal of storm overflows from our system is unaffordable and would take decades and therefore is not an option but what is in our control is the ability to target investment to storm overflows which have the biggest impact on river water quality so that we can improve their performance. That is why we are investing significantly to improve storm overflows with £140m being invested between 2020-2025 with a further £420m planned from 2025 to 2030. The overflow at Pontyrhyl and Llangeinor are being looked at as part of this.
“Many different factors contribute to river and sea water quality – of which wastewater is one element. We have a strong environmental record and have invested heavily to improve water quality in both our rivers and seas. This has delivered real improvements and helped ensure that 40% of our rivers and waterbodies meet good ecological status compared to 16% in England and that Wales has over a third of the UKs Blue Flag beaches while only having 15% of the coastline."
