Protesters Flush Wasteful Management
ROBERT RALPH
On Tuesday 14 March, a group of residents from Hastings and St Leonards Extinction Rebellion and The Clean Water Action Group displayed their disgust at Southern Water’s continued discharges of raw, untreated sewage onto the beach. They staged a sit-down protest at the site of the discharges: an overflow pipe on the beach at Warrior Square, St Leonards.
As the tide drew in, covering the sands that are so often flooded with waste products and human excrement, the protesters sat atop five toilets as if using them – a grotesque parody of the way Southern Water treat the beach on this point of England’s South Coast. All local residents, the protesters read mock newspapers such as the ‘Daily Discharge’, that incorporated headline facts like “193 Sewage dumps in 8 days”.
Jane Ripley explained: “Typical components of sewage include water, nutrients, organic matter, bacteria, viruses, parasites, endocrine disruptors, suspended solids, micro and macro plastics, micro fibres, industrial chemicals, slaughterhouse waste, sediments and heavy metals – each of which individually and together work to harm coastal and Marine ecosystems.”
Theresa T, a local sea swimmer and member of Hastings and St Leonards Extinction Rebellion, went on to say: “I moved to Hastings to swim in the sea and have been shocked and disappointed to discover that Southern Water’s practice of discharging sewage onto beaches has made swimming, that most basic of seaside activities, into a high risk proposition. When we pay our water bills, the money gets used to inflate senior management’s salaries at Southern Water, when it should be invested in repairing and improving sewage infrastructure.”
Last month The Clean Water Action Group had samples of the water tested, and it was found to have high levels of faecal bacteria, the result of a major sewage discharge at Bultherhythe. Southern Water reportedly dumped sewage at beaches 493 times over just eight days in November 2022, amounting to 3,700 hours of discharge.
The residents at the protest highlighted the risk of bouts of heavy rainfall due to an increasingly volatile climate, noting that this will continue to pressurise water and sewage systems that are already not coping. They stated the need for “an emphasis on investment to improve the system quickly before further permanent damage to the beaches and marine environment occurs”.
A Southern Water spokesman stated that the company are extending their efforts to use “an industry-leading approach to reducing the use of storm overflows when increased surface and groundwater enter our sewers.”
Meanwhile campaigners insist that Southern Water could do much more to immediately stem the tide of sewage on our beaches, some suggesting the only way to really get to grips with the problem is for the water companies to be renationalised.
Both Extinction Rebellion and The Clean Water Action Group stated that they will continue to protest until the situation is resolved.
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Hastings beach outfalls were sorted in 1999 see https://www.1066.net/tunnel/#:~:text=Hastings%20Storm%20Tunnel&text=Southern%20Water%20has%20almost%20completed,mile%20(1.6km)%20long.
Having lived in Hastings for over 60 years I can remember when raw sewage WAS discharged onto the beach at Rock-a-nore every day and at a number of others locations during storms. It was therefore a great improvement when in 1999 Southern Water completed the £55 million Bathing Water improvement Scheme not only treating the daily output of sewerage but also providing storage to stop the system overflowing onto the beaches during rain storms.
The outfall on the beach at Warrior Sq is from a stream and was one of the outlets that had any connection with the Victorian sewers removed.
See https://historymap.info/Southern_Water_Storm_Drain
All this work lead to on 5 November 2015 Defra officially announced the designation of Hastings bathing water as ‘Good’, exceeding the target of ‘Sufficient’.
And the recent announcement of the Blue Flag Award.