This weekend there has understandably been much concern about a pollution incident at Saunton Sands beach. Having spent much of Sunday and today trying to get further details on what has happened, and ensuring additional tests were carried out at the beach today, the Environment Agency have confirmed that the water is safe for swimming – indeed Saunton Sands enjoys excellent water quality the vast majority of the time.
However, with the exceptional high tides this weekend, combined with the extreme heat, some sheep manure on the Burrows opposite had dried up, making it very light, and then floated into the water on the high tide, eventually some washing up into the water on the Saunton Sands side.
The Environment Agency put an alert out on their website stating “sewage” as there had been some mixed reports from visitors to the beach as to the nature of the pollution in the water. South West Water attended on Sunday to ensure it was not a sewage leak from any of their infrastructure, which has also been confirmed.
Despite everyone’s best efforts, on occasions there are pollution incidents, and this weekend’s, whilst unusual, is not the first time that sheep manure has entered the water in this area, and with the large overnight tide is now confirmed as cleared. There is also often some confusion between algae blooms and sewage – hopefully the pics below will help provide some additional information. There had been reports of algae blooms across the south west this weekend and this may have contributed to the condition of the water as they tend to appear this time of year.
Online media inaccurately compared the situation to Instow and Wildersmouth. At Instow there are ongoing issues with run-off down the hills (not human sewage) into the river which has meant the bathing water status has been withdrawn. At Wildersmouth work is due to commence shortly on a storm overflow nearby, but there is again an issue with the stream running onto the beach and what is being washed down within that waterway, again not human sewage, mean the water again does not hold bathing status at this time.
Much work continues to go on nationally on the Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan. This plan proposes the most significant infrastructure programme to recover the environment in water company history. This is on top of ambitious action already taken including consulting on targets to improve water quality which will act as a powerful tool to deliver cleaner water, pushing all water companies to go further and faster to fix overflows. Work on tackling sewage overflows continues at pace and we will publish our plan in line with the 1 September statutory deadline, part of our world leading Environment Act.
