As Paul Arnott says the figures from the Environment Agency make for some shocking reading – showing just how widespread a crisis South West Water’s failure to get on top of sewage overflows really is.

Coming in at nearly 10,000 hours – half the total duration of all the 20116 hours of sewage spills in East Devon by South West Water throughout 2022 and 20% of the 2023 total – Tale Vale ward, encompassing villages like Talaton, Payhembury, and Dulford, suffered the most overflows in the East Devon in 2023. 

This is a stark illustration that sewage ‘poollution’ is not just a problem for our coastal towns like Exmouth: it affects all of us.

Remember, the inland “spills” all end up in local water courses and tributaries eventually polluting one or other of our four rivers the: Exe, Otter, Sid or Axe. These then pooliute our swimming water, beaches and the sea.

The table below shows the spill duration data as published by the Environment Agency for the “Top Ten” pooluted East Devon wards in 2023, compared to 2022. These top ten account for 80% of the total 2023 spills in East Devon.

(Caution: not all combined sewage overflows have been monitored during this period – there are some suspicious zeros in 2022. And emergency overflows have not been monitored at all.)

East Devon top ten wards for recorded sewage spills in 2023

Ward	2023 Hours	Change vs 2022
Tale Valley	9472	+5465
Woodbury & Lympstone	5313	+2770
Sidmouth Rural	4827	+4827
Clyst Valley	4089	+3286
Coly Valley	3338	+1568
Newbridges	2879	+1640
Honiton St Paul’s	2856	+209
Exe Valley	2408	+1684
Exmouth Littleham	2083	+1194
Trinity	1892	+1378