Wessex Water

Responsible for at least 43,931 sewage overflows in 2024

On average 120.4 times a day

These lasted for 404,880 hours

That's 46.86 years!

Affecting 1,151 different locations across their service area

Map showing CSO locations for Wessex Water

We need your support!

We managed to raise £150 in 2024. That's not enough to keep the site running. Please consider a one-off or small recurring donation.

Donate Now

Wessex Water has 4 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 . WSX0251

Salisbury

Started 4 hours ago

2 . WSX0819

Yeovil

Started 3 months ago

3 . WSX0841

Salisbury

Started 3 days ago

4 . WSX1158

South Cotswolds

Started 2 months ago

How many Sewage Overflows are dumping sewage?

We have live data for Wessex Water 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 Wessex Water

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.

Wessex Water is highlighted in the plot below

2024 - Worst Locations: Wessex Water

1 . HURDCOTT WASTEWATER TREATMENT WORKS

Salisbury

River Bourne

6,466 hours - That's 8.98 months.

310 incidents - 6 times a week, on average

2 . SHREWTON WATER RECYCLING CENTRE

East Wiltshire

River Till

4,869 hours - That's 6.76 months.

235 incidents - 4.5 times a week, on average

3 . CHEW STOKE WATEWATER TREATMENT WORK

North East Somerset and Hanham

River Chew

4,641 hours - That's 6.45 months.

258 incidents - 5 times a week, on average

4 . SPANIEL'S BRIDGE PUMPING STATION

Melksham and Devizes

River Avon

4,371 hours - That's 6.07 months.

192 incidents - 3.7 times a week, on average

5 . GREAT BADMINTON WWTW

Thornbury and Yate

Luckington Brook

4,012 hours - That's 5.57 months.

189 incidents - 3.6 times a week, on average

6 . CHICKSBRIDGE PS

West Dorset

River Bride

3,793 hours - That's 5.27 months.

188 incidents - 3.6 times a week, on average

2024 - Rivers Polluted by Wessex Water

1 . River Avon

39,065 hours

- That's 4.52 years!

5,221 incidents - On average 14.3 times a day

2 . River Frome

16,043 hours

- That's 1.86 years!

2,048 incidents - On average 5.6 times a day

3 . River Bourne

11,201 hours

- That's 1.3 years!

649 incidents - On average 1.8 times a day

4 . River Stour

10,099 hours

- That's 1.17 years!

943 incidents - On average 2.6 times a day

5 . River Chew

10,002 hours

- That's 1.16 years!

824 incidents - On average 2.3 times a day

6 . River Yeo

9,602 hours

- That's 1.11 years!

813 incidents - On average 2.2 times a day

2024 - Beaches Polluted by Wessex Water

1 . Blue Anchor West

3,446 hours

- That's 4.79 months.

312 incidents - 6 times a week, on average

2 . Clevedon Beach

2,262 hours

- That's 3.14 months.

208 incidents - 4 times a week, on average

3 . Christchurch Avon Beach, Christchurch Friar's Cliff

1,106 hours

- That's 1.54 months.

138 incidents - 2.7 times a week, on average

4 . Seatown

815 hours

- That's 1.13 months.

78 incidents - 1.5 times a week, on average

5 . Lulworth Cove

643 hours

- That's 26.79 days.

58 incidents - 1.1 times a week, on average

6 . Poole Harbour Rockley Sands

593 hours

- That's 24.71 days.

110 incidents - 2.1 times a week, on average

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

Please Support Us

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

Yes! Support TOTP!