A local politician and Southern Water are at loggerheads over the quality of Brighton’s bathing water.
Labour’s candidate for Brighton Pavilion, Tom Gray, has launched a petition as part of his election campaign, in which he says Southern Water is “regularly pouring untreated sewage into the sea that washes across Brighton beach.”
But Southern Water says no sewage has been released from outfalls in Brighton since 2012, thanks to Europe’s biggest storm drain which was built under the beach in the late 1990s.
Mr Gray said his petition refers to one of the two outfalls at Shoreham, which does regularly discharge into the sea.
The long outfall from the harbour’s wastewater treatment works, which is 3km out to sea, does sometimes discharge treated sewage as well as storm overflow.
The Environment Agency said neither would have any likely impact on Brighton’s bathing water. While Brighton’s water quality rating did fall from excellent to good in 2022 after a high E Coli reading, Hove, Southwick and Shoreham, which are nearer the Shoreham outfalls, remained excellent.
E coli is found in sewage, but also in bird faeces, including seagull and starling poo.
Mr Gray’s petition, which at the time of publication had been signed by 198 people, says: “Southern Water are regularly pouring untreated sewage into the sea that washes across Brighton beach.
“Their record is beyond appalling. It must stop.
“Tom Gray, who is standing to be our Labour MP for Brighton Pavilion, got sick sea swimming last year. He is committed to doing whatever is necessary to stop this poisonous activity and wants to know how strong the feeling is amongst the local community.”
A Southern Water spokesman said: “Brighton benefits from what is currently the largest storm tunnel in Europe which runs inside the cliffs. There has not been a storm release within miles of Brighton since the floods of 2012 and all of the flows are safely carried to Peacehaven for treatment.
“The quality of water in Brighton -and at the other 83 designated bathing water sites is very important to us and we work constantly to protect and improve them.
“We’re relining thousands of kilometres of sewer and tracking down toilets and washing machines illegally connected to surface water drains instead of our sewers across the region.
“We would be delighted to meet Tom Gray to share our ambitious plans to spend £1.5 billion to slash the use of the storm system currently used to protect homes from flooding in exceptional weather.”
A spokesman for the Environment Agency said: “A storm discharge in the vicinity of a bathing water may have a short-term impact on water quality but these outfalls are designed to protect bathing water compliance in the long term.
“There are two outlets for Shoreham wastewater treatment works. The short sea outfall (SSO) is nearly 400m offshore and the long sea outfall (LSO) is about 3km offshore. The SSO is only for storm overflow discharges. The LSO discharges treated effluent and occasional storm overflow discharges.
“Due to the distance offshore and dilution and dispersion of any discharge, it is unlikely these outfalls are having an impact on quality at the designated bathing waters, as indicated by the classifications.”
Brighton’s water quality rating fell from excellent to good as a result of a single reading on 26 August, 2022 which found E coli colonies per 100ml. Of the 11 readings taken since then, seven have found fewer than 10 colonies per 100ml, two 18, one 36 and one 150.
The outlying August 2022 reading will continue to affect Brighton’s overall rating until 2027.
A sample taken the same day at Hove found 410 E coli colonies per 100ml. At Southwick, 520 per 100ml were found and at Shoreham, 64.
However, release records on Southern Water’s Beachbuoy site for the the Shoreham01 outfall – the longer pipe 3km out to sea – do show a seven and a half hour discharge on 25 August, 2022.
There is only one release recorded for the shorter pipe, which happened on 10 January this year and resulted in Adur and Worthing Councils warning swimmers not to enter the sea for several days from Fishersgate to Worthing.
Southern Water said it happened because an electrical issue caused two pumps to fail at the Shoreham wastewater treatment works.
In June last year, lifeguards told swimmers to leave the sea after a brown slick was spotted off the beach at by the King Alfred Leisure Centre. However, the Environment Agency said that tests showed it was an algal bloom.
Yet new labour refuse to renationalise water which would mean customer bills going to infrastructure improvements rather than shareholders profits. You can’t trust new new labour
Neither are Green, Tory, Libdem, or Reform. So by your own logic, it’s not a good arguing point. Just comes across as your bias clouding your perspective.
Greens have official policy to renationalise water. The others don’t.
Fair. So, in your mind, Greens, the party that tanked the economy in Brighton, and failed to report this accurately, causing things such as a a reduction of lifeguards and safety on the beach, are more trustworthy than anyone else?
The petition is a joke. The Labour candidate in Shoreham has an identikit one, and both are nothing more than a data capturing opportunity so they get potential voters email addresses. If a petition does not make clear who it’s petitioning then it serves no purpose and is just a gimmick.
Wish he’d do something more than looking for an easy headline – we all know Southern Water are the bad guys. Also pretty embarrassing he doesn’t appear to have got his facts right about where sewage is actually spilling from before making noise about it 😂