Swimming in Sewage

Over 50 competitors in last weekend's World Triathlon Championship Series in the UK fell ill after swimming in the sea off the coast of Sunderland. The UK's filthy rivers and sewage discharges have been largely blamed for the outbreaks of diarrhoea among those competing in the triathlon. 

In the UK the privatized water companies are allowed to discharge raw sewage into rivers when the system becomes overwhelmed, which often happens when there is heavy rain. This handy loophole seems to have encouraged the UK's privatized water companies to refrain from investing in and updating the UK's sewage infrastructure. Why invest in improving the system when you can simply discharge raw sewage whenever you need to?

Unfortunately for the water companies dumping untreated sewage into rivers is very unpopular with the public and lots of organizations have begun mapping discharges of untreated sewage. For example, two days ago Greenpeace unveiled its new interactive map Sewage Spills in Protected Areas. This map shows how many hours of sewage were discharged last year in conservation areas and areas of special scientific interest. These are areas which are home to very important natural habitats used by protected bird and animal species.

The River Trust's Sewage Map also shows you where water companies discharged untreated sewage in 2022, in this case across the whole of England and Wales. On both these maps scaled circles are used as markers. The size of the markers representing the total number of hours that untreated sewage was discharged at a location during 2022.

If you live in the Thames Water area then you can view untreated sewage discharges in near real-time on the company's EDM Map. This map provides near real-time information about storm overflow activity. Yesterday much of the area covered by the map saw lots of rain. Which means that at the moment the map contains lots of exclamation marks (indicating locations where untreated sewage has been discharged in the last 48 hours) and double exclamation marks (locations were untreated sewage is being pumped into rivers right now).

The UK isn't the only country to be experiencing sewage problems. Paris has just had to cancel a swimming event due to be held in Seine, which was designed as a test for next year's Olympic Games. According to The Guardian the event was cancelled after untreated sewage was discharged into the Seine during heavy rain.