Swimmers and surfers have reported falling ill after going into the sea on the Sussex coast, where there has been an ongoing sewage spill for eight days.

“Naturally the intense rainfall of recent storms hitting the south coast has led to the storm overflow system operating — it’s designed to protect homes, schools and businesses from flooding.” Southern Water’s bathing water “lead”.

How well is that working? – Owl

Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk

The spill at Shoreham harbour from a storm overflow run by Southern Water began on December 28 and is still ongoing, as days of heavy rainfall overwhelm sewer capacity.

However, the water company blamed local houseboat toilets for any pollution in the harbour. It said that the firms’ modelling suggested that the overflow was not affecting water quality.

Rob Woodward, a member of a local kitesurfing club, said he had surfed at Shoreham on New Year’s Eve and suffered diarrhoea and vomiting for three days. Emma Kate, a local swimmer, said she swam in the water on the same day and experienced the same symptoms.

“I’m a school teacher which forced me to struggle through my first days back, and my wife and I had a baby due on January 4, so the sickness added to the worry of the C-section,” said Woodward, who lives in Lancing.

He added: “Our south coast could be an absolute hub for water sports, and it’s hindered by poor water quality.”

Campaigners rejected the company’s explanation. Ed Acteson, a campaigner at SOS Whitstable, which has highlighted spills around the Southern Water region in recent years, said he “simply did not believe” that a week of consecutive sewage wouldn’t have any impact. “It’s tantamount to gaslighting for them to claim that,” he said.

He added: “The idea that a few people on houseboats flushing their toilets would have a fraction of the impact of 180-plus hours of sewage from the same location is ridiculous.”

There are many sewage spills around the country due to widespread heavy rainfall from Storm Henk. Run-off into sewers has been exacerbated and the Environment Agency reported the ground across much of England as “completely saturated”.

There are reports of dozens of sewage spills in Kent, Sussex and Hampshire, plus similar numbers in Devon and Cornwall, which is served by South West Water. In Oxfordshire and around London, Thames Water is reporting scores of discharges in its region.

One town’s fight against sewage pollution

Since December 28, the charity Surfers Against Sewage said it had received 38 reports nationally of people getting sick after entering seas and waterways. Most were for gastroenteritis, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting.

At Shoreham beach, one of the two nearest official bathing waters from the Southern Water storm overflow, the charity said it had 40 sickness reports since May 2020. The figures are likely to be a considerable underestimate, as most incidents are not reported.

Alex Lipp, who maintains the website sewagemap.co.uk, said that Thames Water had almost 300 locations spilling sewage on Friday, the most since the company launched its real-time discharges map a year ago.

The Brighton branch of Surfers Against Sewage said it would be holding a protest on a beach in the harbour on Saturday to end sewage dumping there. The group noted that the storm overflow was only 100m from where people swam all year round because it was sheltered from winter waves.

Southern Water is one of only three water firms to offer a real-time sewage spills map; the other six broke a promise made to The Times’s Clean it Up campaign last year to release maps by the end of 2023.

The company, which announced last year it was spending £1.5 billion to tackle sewage spills, said it provided transparent information about transparent discharges but not health advice.

Tom Gallagher, bathing water lead at Southern Water, said: “We provide transparent data on storm overflows for users of designated bathing waters. Naturally the intense rainfall of recent storms hitting the south coast has led to the storm overflow system operating — it’s designed to protect homes, schools and businesses from flooding.

“There are many sources of pollution in coastal areas including road and agricultural run-off, animal waste, discharges from boats and other sources.”