Southern Water alters pollution alert tool to curb automatic red alerts

theguardian.com:

A water company has changed its pollution alert map for the public to stop issuing automatic red alerts after a discharge.

Southern Water attracted public criticism this summer for releasing raw sewage via storm overflows after heavy rain along coastal Kent. Campaigners used social media to widely share the company’s Beachbuoy map, which marks beaches at risk of pollution from raw sewage discharges with a red cross, often revealing that much of the coast has been affected.

After storms in August at least nine Kent beaches were issued with pollution alert warnings and the Environment Agency issued a “do not swim” warning for beaches across much of the north and south-east Kent coasts.

This month Southern Water announced changes to the Beachbuoy map, which means it will no longer automatically flag all raw sewage releases into bathing waters via storm overflows.

Instead Southern Water is analysing the overflows by modelling tides and weather, before deciding which are likely to cause water quality problems at beaches.

Explaining the change on its website Southern said: “In September 2022, we upgraded the map to take into account the impact a release has on a local bathing water, based on the location of the outfall, the duration of the release and tidal conditions at the time.

“For instance, if the outfall is 5km [3.1 miles] out to sea, the release was short and the tidal conditions meant there could be no impact on a bathing water, we no longer turn the bathing water icon red.”

The company said the releases were still available on its website in the accompanying table of combined sewer overflow (CSO) locations. It said most of its outfalls were long sea outfalls and where they are close to bathing waters they were designed with