The short answer: the very dry summer of 2025 helped bring total spill hours across the Solent back down to their lowest level since 2020 - but a closer, site-by-site look shows that not every combined sewer overflow (CSO*) is actually improving. At our August Council meeting, SPS committee member Duncan Purdie presented an updated … Continue reading CSO sewage discharges into the Solent: how do 2022 and 2025 compare?
This incident draws attention to three distinct areas of concern for Solent Protection Society: Environmental Impacts of PollutionClimate Change AdaptationMaritime Safety Environmental Impacts of Pollution The volunteer trustees of the Solent Protection Society are all too familiar with the environmental damage caused by sewage discharges from Southern Water’s combined sewer overflows. Yet, at the eastern … Continue reading Baltic Klipper container spill raises wider concerns
How did Solent area Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) do in 2024? The short answer is better than the dreadful year of 2023, but most of this reduction was significantly due to less rainfall in 2024.So, some slight improvement but still way above 2022 and very significantly above the government’s target. Background The Solent Protection Society … Continue reading CSO sewage discharges into the Solent
Earlier this year the leader of the Solent Protection Society’s Pollution Group, Richard Brown, wrote to his MP, Dr Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East), to express the Society's concern and to ask what action the government was taking on Combined Sewer Overflows, given the high concentration of direct and indirect spills into the Solent … Continue reading SPS parliamentary correspondence on CSO sewage spills into the Solent
We would like to hope that in 2025 we might have some positive news from the Solent regions' water companies, but as 2024 draws to a close, this is starting to look unlikely. The Society made a conscious decision in 2024 to stand back and just keep a monitoring brief on the perpetual problem of … Continue reading The challenges facing the Solent’s water companies
On Friday 29 November, less than a week before the latest Southern Water WRMP Consultation closed, Southern Water experienced two unconnected but near simultaneous major sewer pipe bursts in the Solent Area. What marks both of these incidents as particularly significant is that both sites had been subject to extensive and lengthy repair and refurbishment … Continue reading Double blast in Southern Water’s decaying underground ‘minefield’
As climate change progresses, rainfall patterns in the UK are expected to undergo significant changes. A summary of the key trends, as viewed by the UK Meteorological Office, shows that the UK is projected to become wetter, with an overall increase in annual rainfall. The frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events are expected to … Continue reading SPS challenges Southern Water’s WRMP* options and NSIP* intentions
Southern Water has published the latest version of its Water Resources Management Plan (WRMP) to solicit feedback from the public on the company’s proposed options for future water supply. This new plan, spanning 32 volumes of extensive and often repetitive documents, heavily promotes the marketing message that "the answer is Water Recycling". Unfortunately, the WRMP … Continue reading Fact-checking Southern Water’s Sandown ‘Toilet to Tap’ proposal
There are two sides to the water utility companies' operations; waste water processing and drinking water supply. In the Solent region a single company, Southern Water, manages the waste water needs for all and the drinking water supply for a large area including the Isle of Wight. Portsmouth Water supplies drinking water from its natural … Continue reading Southern Water – From waste water to drinking water
Introduction This SPS article is the latest in a series of website posts and newsletter publications following the Society’s analysis of available data pertaining to the release of untreated sewage into the waters of the Solent. The first article in this series can be found by taking this link. For further explanatory background, please refer … Continue reading Southern Water CSO discharges – Environment Agency data reinforces worsening trend
