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Last weekend’s Sunday Times article (16 March 2014, p. 19) lists two East Devon bathing beaches amongst 45 in the UK at risk of permanent closure because of sewage contamination. They could be “stripped of their designation as bathing waters from 2015. Visitors would be warned by prominent signs that the water was unsafe to bathe in”, the Environment Agency’s head of bathing waters, Christine Tuckett, told the newspaper.
“About a third of the pollution comes from agriculture, a third from point sources like sewage works and the rest is down to random factors like misconnected drains,” said Tuckett.

So what could the pollution sources be at Budleigh Salterton and Ladram Bay? Here’s a look, first, at Ladram Bay, where the expanding caravan site would be hard hit if its customers couldn’t swim from the lovely beach it leads to.

We’ll ask local residents about the Budleigh pollution problem, for a follow-up post.