Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Blackdown Hills

Polluted by sewage 374 times in 2025 - lasting 3,955 hours

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Contains OS Data © Crown copyright & database right 2021-2024
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Totals for Blackdown Hills in 2025

13 Sites polluted by South West Water Wessex Water
374 sewage dumps
3,955 hours duration
Sewage pollution map of Blackdown Hills
Sewage pollution map of Blackdown Hills, showing 374 overflows in 2025
That's 5.49 months. On average 1 times a day

How does Blackdown Hills compare?

Blackdown Hills was the #20 most polluted Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England & Wales, by duration of sewage overflows, as reported by the water companies

Why the change?

Storm overflows spill when it rains, and 2025 was drier than 2024 - 90% of average annual rainfall against 105%.

So much of any drop is weather, not fixed pipes. The live page shows rainfall and sewage side by side, day by day.

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Pollution Summary 2025

Here are all the reported sewage overflow totals for Blackdown Hills in 2025.

How we count, and how accurate it is

A CSO Combined Sewage Overflow - a device that, when operating, pours combined rainwater & sewage into a waterway counts towards Blackdown Hills when it sits inside the designated area, or within 200 metres of its boundary. An overflow close to two AONBs is counted in both.

We use data from the water companies, but we are seeing many anomalies that make us believe that location information is quite poor. The situation is likely far worse than reported here.

Other CSO Combined Sewage Overflow - a device that, when operating, pours combined rainwater & sewage into a waterway s just outside the 200 metre boundary are not counted, though they may still affect water quality inside the area.

Company Waterway Site Sewage Dumps Duration (Hours) Reporting %
South West Water Corry Brook DALWOOD PUMPING STATION 65 1,042 87.9
South West Water Unknown YARCOMBE STW 87 821 100
South West Water River Tale BROADHEMBURY PUMPING STATION 47 769 100
South West Water Watercourse STOCKLAND STW 41 439 100
South West Water Unknown WILMINGTON STW 34 419 100
South West Water River Culm HEMYOCK WASTEWATER TREATMENT WORKS 36 192 100
South West Water River Madford DUNKESWELL WWTW 21 121 98.4
South West Water Dunkeswell Stream DUNKESWELL PS 19 52 100
South West Water River Madford DUNKESWELL WWTW 5 52 98.4
South West Water River Culm HEMYOCK PSCSO/EO 5 19 100
South West Water River Otter CHURCHINFORD STW 6 17 95.1
Wessex Water Broughton Brook MILL LANE NO. 2 CSO 7 6 100
South West Water To River Yarty BUCKLAND ST MARY STW 1 1 100

Data Sources & Accuracy

EDM (Event Duration Monitoring) data and Consented Discharges to Controlled Waters with Conditions from Environment Agency & Data Map Wales, and Scottish Water

Experimental derived data from Thames Water API, Some data may be missing or inaccurate. Live sewage data from Stream Water API

Annual figures up to and including 2025 come from official water company returns. The 2026 figure is our own estimate, derived continuously from the companies' live data feeds.

Uses Environment Agency rainfall data from the real-time data API (Beta) - Rainfall data is delayed by up to two days.

This website is intended to provide an accurate representation of the Environment Agency data. The data is hard to use, and thus some errors may have been made. If you find something that is incorrect, please raise an issue at the GitHub issues page and we'll endeavour to fix it quickly.

This project is not associated, approved or endorsed by any of the companies whose logos you see here.