21 September 2023 , 16:48
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A massive discharge of sewage into the sea off one of Britain’s most popular resorts has sparked fury.
The untreated filth was spotted close to the beach after a storm overflow release during a heavy downpour. Water companies can to discharge sewage into rivers in exceptional circumstances such as heavy rainfall. But they are coming under pressure after 1,000 sewage spills a day were recorded in 2021.
The latest release at Scarborough South Bay by Yorkshire Water appears to have occurred around 5am on Monday during heavy rainfall. Some locals reacted angrily to the move. Gill Nicholson said: “Why are they still allowed to get away with this?” Another resident, Marion Rooke, added: “If I dumped my motor home toilet on the beach I would be hung, drawn and quartered – so why not Yorkshire Water?”
And Janis Bacon wrote: “The Government just doesn’t care about us, our wellbeing or our livelihoods.” But Danny Brooksbank claimed: “It’s unhelpful hysteria. There’s loads of life and the kind of which we never used to see. Sea Bass are now a common sight. Never heard of in my childhood. Same with dolphins and now minke whales.”
The usually clean waters of Scarborough South Bay (Shutterstock / Rodney Hutchinson)Labour councillor Eric Broadbent told The Mirror: “The bottom line is it is unknown what is actually going into the water. People have seen the beaches deserted and they want everything to get back to normal. It’s all over the UK and obviously people don’t like it so it needs some solution.”
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He plans to hold talks with Yorkshire Water in the near future to find “some sort of solution”. Yorkshire Water said the permitted storm overflow discharge was made due to prolonged heavy rainfall on Sunday and Monday. It added “Tackling storm overflows is a priority for us and we are bringing forward investment from 2025-2030 to improve infrastructure.”
The Environment Agency Swimfo page about Scarborough South Bay said yesterday: “The most recent classification is poor, based on samples taken from 2018 to 2022.” In 2019 Yorkshire Water made 22,821 discharges compared to 54,273 in 2022. But that is down from 70,062 in 2021.
* A study found human wastewater is “radically altering” animal, plant and microbe communities and is more damaging than agricultural waste. The University of Oxford research said that drinking, playing in, and farming with the water could all pose health threats to humans.
As a child, the only other thing in the water besides me was salt
By Paul Routledge
The days were long and it didn’t matter if they weren’t hot. It was the chilly North Sea but it wasn’t cold on my young feet because this was holiday, this was Scarborough. Every year in the 40s and 50s, the Routledge family went there for a week. And every day, after breakfast at the B&B, we headed for South Bay beach.
I had fascinating views of the fishing boats bobbing in and out, and the white-hulled Coronia taking holidaymakers for a spin down the coast. If the weather was good, my parents would laze on deckchairs most of the day, while I built sandcastles to rival anything captured by the Crusaders. I paddled in the sea, fetching buckets of water for my moats (it always disappeared). When I learned how, I swam quite a way out.
I never succumbed to water-born diseases. Not because I was fit but because the only other thing in the water besides me was salt. Would I take my great-grandkids there now? To the beach, yes. Into the sea, no. Not into the sewage-flecked Jaws of Yorkshire Water.