Record investment to reduce pollution and prevent flooding, industry-leading transparency, and exploring innovative, nature-based and engineering solutions are just some of the ways Southern Water is playing its part in creating healthier rivers and seas.
Today, we are providing our annual bathing water season update which provides details of improvements to our Beachbuoy tool and new water monitoring technology, alongside open data on the numbers of storm overflows during the 2022 bathing season.
It also provides details on the progress of our six innovative Pathfinder projects across the region, which are exploring a range of different ways to slow and stop large amounts of rainwater entering sewers and increasing the pressure on our network.
It is this pressure that can require the use of combined storm overflows (CSOs) to allow flows which are up to 95% rainwater to enter our seas and rivers, as a release valve. If this did not happen, as it does across the UK, homes and communities would be flooded.
We are working hard to reduce our reliance on these systems, and our efforts – led by our Cleaner Rivers and Seas Task Force – are making a difference. In our region, largely due to the drier summer, releases were down almost half in 2022, year on year, during the bathing season, with 479, compared to 891 in 2021 – but more improvement is needed.
Toby Willison, Director of Quality and Environment at Southern Water, said: “Our colleagues live and work in and around our region and enjoy our coast regularly. They are rightly proud of the part they play in protecting and preserving our natural environment, day in, day out.
“This is why we are investing £2 billion, or £1,000 per household, between 2020-25 to significantly improve performance, and are reducing pollution by up to 40% this year and by 80% over the next three years.
“The next phase of our transformation includes the need to further reduce storm overflows and improve water quality monitoring across the South East region. We have a number of large-scale programmes, all designed to build resilience, increase capacity across our network and ultimately improve water quality.”