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Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs

Polluted by sewage 460 times in 2025 - lasting 4,011 hours

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Totals for Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs in 2025

14 Sites polluted by Wessex Water
460 sewage dumps
4,011 hours duration
That's 5.57 months. On average 1.3 times a day

How does Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs compare?

Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs was the #19 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 Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs 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 Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs 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 %
Wessex Water River Nadder BARFORD ST MARTIN WRC 81 1,550 99.9
Wessex Water Fovant Brook FOVANT WATER RECYCLING CENTRE 81 1,252 100
Wessex Water River Crane CRANBORNE WATER RECYCLING CENTRE 23 374 100
Wessex Water River Wylye Via A Reed Bed HANGING LANGFORD PUMPING STATION 84 242 100
Wessex Water River Wylye GREAT WISHFORD WRC 10 190 99.8
Wessex Water Ditch CHILMARK PUMPING STATION 7 100 100
Wessex Water Groundwater Via Infilt System HINDON WASTEWATER TREATMENT WORKS 74 96 99.6
Wessex Water River Nadder Via Sws TISBURY COMBINED SEWER OVERFLOW 36 71 100
Wessex Water Groundwater Via Infilt System MAIDEN BRADLEY WWTW 26 45 100
Wessex Water River Nadder BARFORD ST MARTIN PUMPING STATION 4 41 100
Wessex Water River Sem SEMLEY WATER RECYCLING CENTRE 17 39 99.8
Wessex Water Fontmell Brook SUTTON WALDRON PUMPING STATION 1 3 100
Wessex Water River Frome MAIDEN BRADLEY CSO 12 2 88.9
Wessex Water River Nadder HINDON PUMPING STATION 4 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.