Correspondence with Karen Crawford, Exmouth resident and year round swimmer, reveals how South West Water (SWW) could be “gaming” the much trumpeted tougher regulations to their, but not our, advantage.

Water companies now have to fit emergency discharge monitors (EDM) on combined sewer outfalls to report spills and their duration (not volume). This will be a metric which politicians will use to demonstrate that our rivers and bathing waters are “improving” and water companies will use to award bonuses and avoid penalties. 

SSW claim that they are investing £38m in Exmouth and Sandy bay to reduce pollution.

It seems that, so far, an impressive £14m has been invested in upgrading the main Exmouth discharge pipe out to sea from Sandy Bay/Straight Point. 

Do you remember seeing this strange floating structure off Straight Point in 2022?

This means that much more treated water can be discharged in normal circumstances and raw sewage in times of overload. Possibly four times as much.

However, improvements to the Maer Lane treatment works are only at an initial or “concept” stage for starting in 2028. I.e.there will be no increase in treatment capacity until at least then, realistically a lot, lot later. And we continue to build more houses.

Meanwhile, SWW is giving priority to upgrading the pumps at surrounding sewage pumping stations. These are tanks used to collect local sewage which is then pumped to the treatment works. Improving the pumps means they will be able to reduce the discharges at 5 or 6 EDM sites by increasing capacity to send more sewage directly out to sea through the trunk main. So 5 or 6 potential discharges could be reduced to a single, combined one, instead.

Remember, SWW committed to building treatment works for the new development locally at Cranbrook but changed their mind and used Countess Weir. Now, Maer Lane and Countess Weir have no spare capacity at all. Both treatment works discharge at the first sign of rain.

So investing in increasing the pipe capacity from Maer Lane into the sea and upgrading the pumps at pumping stations, is a quick win for the government and SWW but doesn’t do anything for us or the environment.

Sandy Bay has already gone from “Excellent” to “Sufficient” bathing water quality in just a few years. 

It all seems a bit topsy-turvy to Owl who would have thought that the first priority would be to increase treatment capacity.

Evidence can be found here.