UPDATE 2150 19th August
Following Rother District Council’s difficult decision to advise the closure of Bexhill and Normans Bay beaches on Wednesday afternoon, we are pleased to confirm that the council has advised on reopening the beaches on Saturday morning.
For updates on the reopening of the bathing waters, visit Rother District Council
The pumping station at Galley Hill remains in full operation. However, we continue our complex investigations, while maintaining our mobile generators on standby to prevent this happening again, and continuing staff monitoring 24 hours a day.
We are continuing beach walks throughout the weekend. Again, We are deeply sorry for this incident and we understand the seriousness and distress this has caused.
UPDATE 1730 18th August
We continue to carry out complex repairs, and we have generators on standby to prevent this happening again. We are staffing the site and closely monitoring it 24 hours a day. We continue to carry out beach walks over the weekend. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused, and are working closely with Rother District Council and the Environment Agency.
We’re very sorry to say that a significant issues with electrical power at one of our wastewater pumping stations has caused a release into the sea at Bexhill.
Rother District Council has made the difficult decision to advise the closure of Bexhill and Normans Bay beaches following a release of untreated wastewater off the coast on Wednesday afternoon.
Southern Water and Rother District Council continue to investigate any potential impact on the bathing water quality. More information will be shared as the situation develops. The beach and seafront concessions remain open as usual.
For updates on the bathing water closure, visit Rother District Council
This took place from 12:00 when both the primary power and back-up system failed. We restored power by this evening and have crews on site to manage the situation with emergency generators to ensure resilience.
We are liaising closely with the Environment Agency and Rother District Council and providing information to assess the potential impact of this event. We also have teams at the nearby Bexhill and Normans Bay beaches searching for any evidence.
We are deeply sorry for this incident and we understand the seriousness and the distress this causes.
We continue to investigate the root cause and will share this with stakeholders and customers when we can.