Surfers Against Sewage Response to the Environment Agency’s Spill Frequency Trigger Permit Consultation

Surfers Against Sewage Response to the Environment Agency’s Spill Frequency Trigger Permit Consultation

Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) has been a leading organisation highlighting the impacts of sewer overflows on the UK’s coastal environment and the people that use it.

SAS have many year experience sitting on various water quality groups at a regional, national and European level. The SAS initiative, the Safer Seas Service, provides thousands of members of the public with free, real-time water quality information relating to untreated human sewage discharges and diffuse pollution.

Q1. Are we right to prioritise the triggering of action only on those storm overflows that are identified as operating outside their designs by a significant margin?

SAS believe that where a design specification has been agreed by regulators and the water company, and paid for by the bill payer, then the water company should be required to deliver on the agreed performance.

The design specifications for the combined sewer overflow assets considered in this spill frequency trigger permit consultation are set to deliver no more than 3 spills a bathing season and 10 spills a year*. To avoid unseasonably wet periods affecting these limits regulators can view the total numbers of spills over a 10 year period (30 spills over 10 years).

*In the event of the bathing water having more than 1 sewer overflow asset with the potential to impact the surrounding area, and/or recreational water users the bathing water should only be allowed to be impacted a maximum of 3 times during the bathing season, restricted to extreme weather events only.

SAS are deeply concerned the spill frequency trigger permitting consultation has the potential to allow water company assets to consistently discharge untreated human sewage up to 7 times a bathing season and up to 17 times a year. Whilst these inflated limits have been suggested to trigger investigations in the wettest years and assuming drier years will experience fewer spills, they have the potential to allow 70 sewer overflow spills over 10 bathing seasons and 170 spills over a decade without any investigation. SAS feel these limits are inappropriate for protecting the environment, the people that use it and in ensuring water companies deliver on projects they have charged their customers for.

The Environment Agency has also included a suggestion of 5 spills a bathing season and 14 spills a year limits that would need to be reached to trigger an investigation within the consultation. These limits are still higher than the agreed levels and don’t deliver good value for money for the bill payer, the environment and the people that use it.

To conclude, SAS would strongly call on the Environment Agency to require water companies to deliver on the agreed levels of no more than 3 spills a bathing season and no more than 10 over the entire year and if these levels are breached an investigation should be triggered immediately.

Q2. Do you agree with our approach to focus on those discharge whose improved performance was relied upon through previous investment to deliver the environment outcome?

SAS would like these spill frequency limits to be applied to all sewer overflow assets that impact the coast and rivers important for recreation and/or environmentally sensitive. . However, we recognise that the regulator may struggle with capacity due to the sheer number of sewer overflow assets water companies operate.

We would accept that focusing on the sewer overflow assets that are or have been included in Asset Management Plans between 1989 -2020 should be the initial priority. However, we would ask that the spill frequency limit be considered for all overflow assets that discharge into the environment at the proposed review in 2025.

Q3. Do you agree that this approach does consider protection of the environmental outcome?

SAS have concerns about water company sewer overflows that are designated as Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive overflows. These overflows are excluded from this approach, yet still have the potential to impact the environment and the people that use it.

SAS believe the current Bathing Water Directive sampling regime is not sophisticated enough to adequately identify short-term pollution events linked to sewer overflows. During the 2015 bathing season, only 11% of the 1,000 sewer overflow discharges, reported in the Safer Seas Service occurred within 24 hours of the Environment Agency’s weekly bathing water samples.

To consider the protection of the environmental outcome, SAS would expect the spill frequency limit be set at no more than 3 spills a bathing season and no more than 10 spills a year. Regulators and the water company have previously agreed these limits and water companies have charged the bill payer to deliver against these design outcomes. The proposed levels suggested by the Environment Agency are significantly beyond this level and allow water companies greater freedom to impact on the environment.

Q4. We would welcome your views on the 2 options; MAX + 1 and 90%ile for setting the trigger value and what would be your preferred option?

SAS is calling for a maximum of 3 sewer overflow discharges per bathing season*, with discharges restricted to emergency conditions and/or extreme weather events only. The provision of free, real-time information to the public must also be made a mandatory requirement in response to pollution events.

The 3 sewer overflow discharges per bathing season could be measured over a decade (30 spills over 10 years) to ensure that unseasonably weather doesn’t adversely impact the dataset. Where there isn’t a 10-year dataset of reliable data, SAS would reluctantly support the 5 sewer overflow discharges per bathing season limit, the lowest option available in the consultation, until a decade of reliable data is collected. When a 10-year dataset is established the spill limit should be reduced to 3 sewer overflow discharges per bathing season.

*In the event of the bathing water having more than 1 sewer overflow asset with the potential to impact the surrounding area, and/or recreational water users the bathing water should only be allowed to be impacted a maximum of 3 times during the bathing season, restricted to extreme weather events only.

In the event of these conditions being breached SAS would call for significant financial punishments enforced on the offending water company.

Q5. Do you agree that we need consistency in counting spills, and if this is not available for design spill counts then catchment specific triggers should not be applied and table 1 used as the default?

SAS would agree that consistency is needed in counting spills to ensure each water company is required to reach the same level of performance. However, SAS would want to ensure the definition of a significant spill is revised with consultation with environmental organisations and health protection agencies.

Q6. Do you agree that we need consistency in counting spills, and if volume measurement is not available then the default should be to include all measured spills in the 12/24 counting method to assess spill frequency trigger exceedance?

SAS would agree that consistency is needed in counting spills to ensure each water company is required to reach the same level of performance. SAS would support the measuring of the effluent volume discharged during a spill to ensure that significant spills are identified and logged and remedial action can be taken where necessary.

Q7. Where aggregation details are not available, then we propose to set trigger limits on discrete discharges. Do you consider this a practical solution that balances risk to the environment with protection offered by getting spill frequency trigger permits implemented? Can you suggest a better alternative?

There is a social responsibility to protect the public and the environment from the potential risk from untreated sewage discharged from water company overflow assets. Where information isn’t available demonstrating an asset doesn’t have a cumulative impact, SAS would call on the Environment Agency to support a precautionary principle approach to managing this risk and include the asset in an aggregation for the protected water. The burden of proof must fall on the water company responsible for the asset to provide the regulator with reliable evidence to demonstrate an asset hasn’t got the potential to impact the water quality or human health.