Yorkshire Water

was responsible for at least 77,761 sewage overflows in 2023
On average 213 times a day

These lasted for 516,386 hours (That's 59.77 years!) - in 1,861 different locations across their service area

2023 - 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.

2023 - 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.

Yorkshire Water is highlighted in the plot below

2023 - Worst Locations Yorkshire Water

1. HUDDERSFIELD STW

Huddersfield polluted for 5,313 hours, into River Calder

467 incidents

That's 7.38 months.

On average 1.3 times a day

2. LANGTHORNE STW

Richmond (Yorks) polluted for 5,185 hours, into Cobshaw Dyke

259 incidents

That's 7.2 months.

5 times a week, on average

3. WISTOW SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS

Selby and Ainsty polluted for 5,106 hours, into River Ouse

328 incidents

That's 7.09 months.

6.3 times a week, on average

4. HIGH ROYD SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS

Calder Valley polluted for 3,930 hours, into River Calder

282 incidents

That's 5.46 months.

5.4 times a week, on average

5. KEIGHLEY (MARLEY) STW

Keighley polluted for 3,862 hours, into River Aire

337 incidents

That's 5.36 months.

6.5 times a week, on average

6. WENTWORTH WWTW

Wentworth and Dearne polluted for 3,789 hours, into Unnamed Of Harley Dyke

198 incidents

That's 5.26 months.

3.8 times a week, on average

Water Companies

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.