Woolacombe

March Sewage Pollution in South West England

It’s the day after February 28th, and the previous month’s sewage pollution article is overflowing with almost continuous news of combined sewer overflow activations around the coast of Devon and Cornwall. I’ve taken the liberty of starting this article a day early, hoping rather than expecting that March will be a bit quieter.

After yet more rain overnight, here is this morning’s Surfers Against Sewage map of pollution around our coasts:

Starting with the local surfing beaches, sewage pollution has been occurring this morning at Widemouth Bay:

and the adjacent Trevone and Harlyn Bays, amongst numerous other places across Cornwall:

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Bank Holiday Sewage in the South West’s Seas

We could see it coming from many miles away:

Here is August Bank Holiday Friday’s first sewage pollution incident of the long weekend around the long coastline of South West England, courtesy of South West Water’s “Water Fit Live” map:

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Summer’s in the air, and sewage is in the sea

School summer holidays are starting. I don’t know if there is a causal relationship, but it probably won’t come as a huge surprise to many residents of West Devon that the UK Met Office’s rainfall map of the area looked like this yesterday afternoon:

As luck would have it, I had just set up our shiny new Twitter account so that I could report to the rest of the planet on yesterday’s exciting news from Halwill Junction football pitch.

Twitter insisted that I “follow” several other accounts, and of course South West Water was top of my list! Whereupon Elon Musk‘s latest (single) X algorithm suddenly revealed this to me:

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Continue ReadingSummer’s in the air, and sewage is in the sea