United Utilities

Responsible for at least 77,817 sewage overflows in 2024

On average 213.2 times a day

These lasted for 450,778 hours

That's 52.17 years!

Affecting 1,977 different locations across their service area

Map showing CSO locations for United Utilities

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United Utilities has 10 CSOs dumping sewage right now

Here are the ones that have been overflowing for the longest, without interruption

We are getting more data collated for each of the CSOs... right now we just have the Constituency. Unfortunately, the water companies use different names for the CSOs in their live data than in the annual returns, so it will take a bit of time to link all the data up....

1 . UUG0007

Morecambe and Lunesdale

Started 3 days ago

2 . UUG0436

Salford

Started 2 weeks ago

3 . UUG0777

Stalybridge and Hyde

Started 3 weeks ago

4 . UUG0841

Mid Cheshire

Started 3 months ago

5 . UUG1130

Congleton

Started 2 weeks ago

6 . UUG1701

Warrington South

Started 1 month ago

7 . UUG1754

Bury South

Started 1 month ago

8 . UUG1877

Bolton West

Started 2 months ago

9 . UUG1900

Bolton North East

Started 1 month ago

How many Sewage Overflows are dumping sewage?

We have live data for United Utilities so we can track what happens every day - given that overflows are supposed to happen on an 'exceptional' basis only - does the chart indicate that?

Total CSOs monitored

CSOs overflowing (30+ mins)

CSOs offline (30+ mins)

There is daily updated information on all constituencies covered by United Utilities

2024 - By Water Company

How does each water company compare? These are the totals by company for each. The totals are really high, counting things in hours doesn't make it very easy to think about. Here we show how many years of continuous sewage dumps happened in a single year, by water company.

2024 - Asset Spill Duration Comparison

It isn't like there are just a few outliers... the problem exists across the entire estate of water assets. Here we show a 'cumulative frequency diagram' - where the number of CSOs that dumped sewage for a time, or longer, is shown. You can see that many CSOs dumped sewage into a river for months and months.

United Utilities is highlighted in the plot below

2024 - Worst Locations: United Utilities

1 . CARTMEL IN CARK PUMPING STATION

Westmorland and Lonsdale

River Eea

4,775 hours - That's 6.63 months.

236 incidents - 4.5 times a week, on average

2 . GLEASTON CASTLE CSO

Barrow and Furness

Gleaston Beck

4,517 hours - That's 6.27 months.

191 incidents - 3.7 times a week, on average

3 . KIRK BAMPTON WWTW (KIRKB)

Penrith and Solway

Burghmoor Beck

4,280 hours - That's 5.94 months.

310 incidents - 6 times a week, on average

4 . NEWBIGGIN (LEVEN) WWTW NEWBG

Barrow and Furness

Deep Meadows Beck

3,863 hours - That's 5.37 months.

216 incidents - 4.2 times a week, on average

5 . BROMBOROUGH WWTW

Ellesmere Port and Bromborough

River Mersey Estuary

3,635 hours - That's 5.05 months.

325 incidents - 6.2 times a week, on average

6 . ORTON STW

Westmorland and Lonsdale

Chapel Beck

3,579 hours - That's 4.97 months.

219 incidents - 4.2 times a week, on average

2024 - Rivers Polluted by United Utilities

1 . River Mersey Estuary

12,535 hours

- That's 1.45 years!

1,865 incidents - On average 5.1 times a day

2 . River Irwell

11,946 hours

- That's 1.38 years!

2,523 incidents - On average 6.9 times a day

3 . River Eden

11,193 hours

- That's 1.3 years!

1,646 incidents - On average 4.5 times a day

4 . River Tame

10,511 hours

- That's 1.22 years!

1,947 incidents - On average 5.3 times a day

5 . River Derwent

9,606 hours

- That's 1.11 years!

1,066 incidents - On average 2.9 times a day

6 . River Ellen

7,707 hours

- That's 10.7 months.

746 incidents - On average 2 times a day

2024 - Beaches Polluted by United Utilities

1 . Wallasey

9,432 hours

- That's 1.09 years!

1,797 incidents - On average 4.9 times a day

2 . Allonby

6,296 hours

- That's 8.74 months.

759 incidents - On average 2.1 times a day

3 . St Annes

5,942 hours

- That's 8.25 months.

1,021 incidents - On average 2.8 times a day

4 . Fleetwood

4,042 hours

- That's 5.61 months.

631 incidents - On average 1.7 times a day

5 . Haverigg; Walney Biggar Bank; Walney West Shore; Walney Sandy Gap

3,754 hours

- That's 5.21 months.

301 incidents - 5.8 times a week, on average

6 . Seascale

3,698 hours

- That's 5.14 months.

485 incidents - On average 1.3 times a day

Water Companies

These water companies are responsible for managing sewage treatment and preventing pollution in our waterways.

Anglian Water

Dwr Cymru Welsh Water

Northumbrian Water

Scottish Water

Severn Trent Water

South West Water

Southern Water

Thames Water

United Utilities

Wessex Water

Yorkshire Water

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. This 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

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