Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Northumberland Coast

Polluted by sewage 402 times in 2025 - lasting 1,928 hours

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

21 Sites polluted by Northumbrian Water
402 sewage dumps
1,928 hours duration
Sewage pollution map of Northumberland Coast
Sewage pollution map of Northumberland Coast, showing 402 overflows in 2025
That's 2.68 months. On average 1.1 times a day

How does Northumberland Coast compare?

Northumberland Coast was the #25 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 Northumberland Coast 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 Northumberland Coast 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 %
Northumbrian Water North Sea RAF BOULMER SEWAGE PUMPING STATION 29 453 100
Northumbrian Water North Sea BOULMER SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS 43 394 99.9
Northumbrian Water North Sea AMBLE HARBOUR SPS 31 242 97.9
Northumbrian Water North Sea CRASTER SOUTH SPS 61 217 99.5
Northumbrian Water Embleton Burn Embleton Sewage Treatment Works 36 195 99.9
Northumbrian Water North Sea MITCHELL AVENUE SPS 43 176 99.7
Northumbrian Water North Sea BEADNELL HARBOUR SPS 23 63 99.9
Northumbrian Water Embleton Burn EMBLETON SEWAGE WORKS CSO 22 30 99.9
Northumbrian Water Hips Burn STEPPEY LANE CSO A020 34 29 99.7
Northumbrian Water North Sea CRASTER NORTH SPS 12 20 99.7
Northumbrian Water North Sea HOLY ISLAND STW 9 20 100
Northumbrian Water River Aln STEPPY LANE PUMPING STATION 9 16 100
Northumbrian Water North Sea HARBOUR SPS 12 14 92.1
Northumbrian Water Coquet WOODLANDS NO 3 SPS 3 13 95.3
Northumbrian Water River Aln ALNMOUTH SPS 7 9 100
Northumbrian Water Coquet Estuary A1068 ROAD BRIDGE CSO 5 9 87.9
Northumbrian Water Coquet BEAL BANK SPS 6 8 100
Northumbrian Water North Sea KING STREET SEWAGE PUMPING STATION 7 4 99.7
Northumbrian Water North Sea RED BARNS, BAMBURGH SPS 3 4 99.9
Northumbrian Water Coquet, Tidal Waters WARKWORTH SEWERAGE SYSTEM SSO MH NO 3 2 100
Northumbrian Water Craster Burn DUNSTAN SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS 4 0 99.8

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.