It's a Dirty Business

Watch Channel 4's documentary about the state of the water industry, then sign the petition to bring water back to public ownership.

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

South Devon

Polluted by sewage 2,270 times in 2025 - lasting 16,323 hours - That's 1.89 years!

Monitoring fell below 50% in some locations so could be more

Marker shade

Totals for South Devon in 2025

72 Sites polluted by South West Water

2,270 sewage dumps

16,323 hours duration

That's 1.89 years. On average 6.2 times a day

How does South Devon compare?

South Devon was the #8 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.

Live Data

Take Action

Sewage pollution map of South Devon, showing 2,270 overflows in 2025

We need your support!

Please consider a one-off or small recurring donation. We need your help to keep this site going.

Donate Now

Constituencies

Pollution Summary 2025

Here are all the reported sewage overflow totals for South Devon 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 South Devon 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	Kingston Stream	KINGSTON WWTW	103	2,042	100
South West Water	Wembury Bay	WEMBURY WWTW	74	1,485	99.5
South West Water	Dart Estuary	CORNWORTHY WWTW	74	1,001	100
South West Water	Start Bay/Slapton Ley	SLAPTON WASTEWATER TREATMENT WORKS	72	996	100
South West Water	Newton Creek	BRIDGEND PUMPING STATION	53	920	97
South West Water	River Dart Estuary	SCOUT HUT CSO	51	772	98.3
South West Water	Ayleston Brook	MODBURY WASTEWATER TREATMENT WORKS	54	656	100
South West Water	Start Bay	TORCROSS PUMPING STATION	40	654	100
South West Water	River Avon	DIPTFORD SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS	111	484	100
South West Water	Ayleston Brook	POUNDWELL MEADOW CSO	33	436	99.3
South West Water	Start Bay, English Channel	STRETE WWTW	49	432	99.8
South West Water	Unnamed Coastal Stream	EAST PRAWLE STW	60	423	100
South West Water	Ringmore Stream	RINGMORE STW	26	394	100
South West Water	Charleton Stream	WEST CHARLETON STW	46	390	100
South West Water	River Erme Estuary	HOLBETON SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS	46	387	48.8
South West Water	River Dart Estuary	STOKE GABRIEL PSCSO/EO	20	334	100
South West Water	Salcombe Estuary	EAST PORTLEMOUTH WWTW	29	324	100
South West Water	Leonards Cove Stream	STOKE FLEMING PUMPING STATION	36	324	100
South West Water	Galmpton Stream	GALMPTON (HOPE COVE) STW	16	287	93.2
South West Water	Chillington Stream	CHILLINGTON & FROGMORE STW	28	284	100
South West Water	South Milton Stream	SOUTH MILTON STW	37	268	97.7
South West Water	Old Mill Creek Via Sws	TOWNSTAL TANK CSO	25	228	95.2
South West Water	Frogmore Creek	EAST CHARLETON PUMPING STATION	15	221	99.4
South West Water	River Dart Estuary	DITTISHAM WWTW	46	212	99.9
South West Water	Shadycombe Creek	COMMINUTOR HOUSE CSO	89	200	97.4
South West Water	River Dart Via Sws	SMITH STREET CSO	85	162	100
South West Water	River Avon	LODDISWELL WWTW	15	151	100
South West Water	River Dart Estuary	FERRY BOAT INN PUMPING STATION	73	143	100
South West Water	Kingsbridge Estuary	BRIDGE STREET QUAY CSO	50	141	100
South West Water	English Channel- Heybrook Bay	HEYBROOK BAY PUMPING STATION	62	136	99.9
South West Water	River Yealm	YEALMPTON WWTW	14	128	100
South West Water	River Erme Estuary	HOLBETON SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS	55	117	100
South West Water	Dart River Estuary	MAYORS AVENUE PUMPING STATION	46	116	100
South West Water	Wembury Bay	WEMBURY BEACH PSCSO/EO	13	113	98.9
South West Water	Blanksmill Creek	MALBOROUGH EJECTOR PS	28	108	100
South West Water	English Channelat Wembury Bay	HMS CAMBRIDGE PUMPING STATION	15	88	100
South West Water	English Channel	BOLTON STREET CSO	64	78	100
South West Water	River Dart	LOWER FERRY PUMPING STATION	44	76	100
South West Water	Stream	KIMBERLEY NURSERIES CSO	68	67	100
South West Water	Broad Ooze, Yealm Estuary	BRIXTON WASTEWATER TREATMENT WORKS	22	63	99
South West Water	Kingsbridge Estuary	PRINCE OF WALES ROAD CSO	35	59	100
South West Water	Hey Brook	GABBER INJECTOR PUMPING STATION	15	50	96
South West Water	Baston Creek	BATSON GREEN PUMPING STATION	17	31	99.9
South West Water	Combe Stream	QUILLETTS CSO	47	29	100
South West Water	River Harbourne	ASHPRINGTON WWTW	19	28	97.1
South West Water	Frogmore Stream	HOME CLOSE PUMPING STATION	2	25	100
South West Water	River Dart Estuary	WARFLEET CREEK PUMPING STATION	6	23	99.4
South West Water	River Yealm	YEALMPTON WWTW	4	20	100
South West Water	River Yealm	TORBRIDGE SOUTH CSO	16	20	99.5
South West Water	Shadycombe Creek	SHADYCOMBE LOWER TUNNEL	4	18	98.9
South West Water	Slapton Ley	STOKENHAM CARAVAN PARK CSO	28	18	76.3
South West Water	Hope Cove	OUTER HOPE PUMPING STATION	14	18	100
South West Water	Dittisham Mill Creek-Estuarine	MILL CREEK PUMPING STATION	15	16	100
South West Water	Frogmore Creek	CHILLINGTON COMBINED SEWER OVERFLOW	25	13	100
South West Water	Galmpton Stream	GALMPTON PUMPING STATION	10	13	100
South West Water	River Dart	DARTHAVEN MARINA PUMPING STATION	33	11	100
South West Water	Kingsbridge Estuary	SOUTHVILLE EMBANKMENT PS	8	10	100
South West Water	Combe Stream	MALBOROUGH VILLAGE PUMPING STATION	6	10	100
South West Water	English Channel	OVERSEAS ESTATE WEST PS	24	9	100
South West Water	Avon River Estuary	AVETON GIFFORD WWTW	4	6	95.3
South West Water	Hope Cove	INNER HOPE PSCSO/EO	3	4	100
South West Water	Dart Estuary	PRIORY SLIP PUMPING STATION	5	3	100
South West Water	Stream	SOUTH MILTON CSO	6	2	99
South West Water	Batson Creek	SHADYCOMBE LOWER TUNNEL	7	2	98.9
South West Water	River Yealm Estuary	COURTWOOD ROAD PSCSO/EO	4	2	100
South West Water	Silverbridge Lake	WINSTON LANE CSO	9	2	100
South West Water	River Yealm	CHURCH WAY CSO	8	1	97.7
South West Water	River Yealm	TORBRIDGE NORTH CSO	2	0	98
South West Water	Newton Creek	KILN QUAY PUMPING STATION	2	0	100
South West Water	River Wash	TUCKENHAY BRIDGE PS	1	0	98
South West Water	Newton Creek	RIVER SIDE NO 1 CSO	3	0	98.2
South West Water	Kingsbridge Estuary	NORTH SANDS PUMPING STATION	1	0	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.

Analysing sewage pollution by the Water Industry

Media Queries

Get in touch if you have queries or want to discuss our data.

press [at] top-of-the-poops.org

Please Support Us

We rely on donations to fund our work. Please support us if you can

Yes! Support TOTP!

© 2020-2025 Top-Of-The-Poops CC-BY-SA 4.0,
© Openstreetmap contributors, Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2021-2025,
Contains Water UK National Storm Overflow Hub Data CC-BY-SA 4.0 and analysis © 2025 Top-Of-The-Poops

Some data reproduced under Open Government Licence

Please don't scrape these pages - we can maybe share our data with you

Full Copyright information available at: our GitHub page