England’s sewage crisis was laid bare today by a new real-time map revealing which river sections are downstream of discharges from storm overflows.
Spills into lakes, rivers and seas by water firms more than doubled from 1.75million hours in 2022 to 3.6million in 2023, according to Environment Agency data.
The companies are already under intense scrutiny over the degraded state of rivers, lakes and coasts along with rising bills, executive bonuses and shareholder dividends.
Now, University College London environmental lecturer Dr Alex Lipp has worked with web developer Jonny Dawe to create what they have dubbed ‘The Sewage Map’.
The map shows a ‘poo’ emoji when discharges are live. A red exclamation mark is for a spill in the last 48 hours and a green tick indicates no spill in the last 48 hours.
It currently only shows England because Scotland and Wales are regulated differently, but the developers hope to be able to show their data in future.
The map is modelled continuously rather than a river-by-river basis – and ‘non’ polluted rivers are not shown, to keep the map as simple as possible.
Dr Lipp, an earth and environmental scientist and lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at UCL, said: ‘Pollution of waterways globally is major issue impacting on human health as well as freshwater and marine ecosystems.
‘We wanted to create something that shows the connectivity of sewage pollution, and the thing we are all interested in is rivers.
‘Rivers are something people have a very strong relationship to, and sewage going into rivers invokes a strong emotional impact that is not being understood.
‘It is so important as a society to have a strong emotional relationship with our environment. So we used what data we have to highlight which rivers are being impacted.’
Untreated sewage overflows are responsible for releasing pollutants such as microplastics, illegal drugs, animal agricultural waste and human waste into the environment.
Last May, a team of engineers and scientists warned of a growing public health risk from human faeces in rivers, and called for more frequent testing.
Marine charity Surfers Against Sewage has also stated how sewage can cause huge algae blooms, starving water of oxygen and resulting in the death of river and ocean species.
Campaigners are calling for urgent action as the UK now has less than half of its biodiversity remaining – because of human activity.
The map began as a collaboration between Dr Lipp, as part of his work as a researcher whilst at Oxford, and Mr Dawe.
Due to government legislation, water companies were made to release their sewage discharge data over the last few years – which sparked the pair’s interest.
The map then launched in 2023, initially as a ‘side project’, but Alex said it has now taken on ‘a life of its own’.
Dr Lipp explained: ‘Let’s be clear, the water companies have not chosen to unveil this data, legislation came into force which meant they had to release it.
‘The actual data itself is really limited: all the data tells you is if an overflow is spilling or if it isn’t. But we don’t know what it is spilling.
‘That’s the nature of the monitors in use, for instance, if you want to know how much of an impact these are having on the river system, we need more data, and we don’t currently have that.
‘The companies have to release data every year – but it’s just the annual return: the total numbers of hours of spill for each monitor. But what we want to know is was there a spill last week and how does this correspond to rainfall?
‘It’s a big shame as I want to see if I can match up spill records with water quality, but we cannot compare the two if they don’t reveal the true data.’