There were at least 513,234 "sewage spills" into rivers in 2024, lasting an almost unbelievable 4,150,989 hours

An image showing the river network in England and Wales, highlighting those polluted with sewage

Rivers Ranked for 2024

Here are the top rivers in England and Wales that had sewage overflows in 2024. As the list is grouped by company, some rivers may feature more than once, being polluted by different companies along their length.

The full list is quite long. You can access that

As there are different rivers with the same name in different parts of the country, it didn't seem sensible to group by river name alone.

The category of "river" is made by the water companies in their "Consent to Discharge with Conditions" - so although there are a number of Seas in this list, that's what they are reporting

Rank River Company Sewage Dumps Change Duration (Hours) Change
1 River Avon Wessex Water 5,221 502 39,065 6,487
2 Unknown South West Water 2,813 -538 30,218 1,939
3 River Trent Severn Trent Water 3,186 247 26,083 4,306
4 River Ouse Yorkshire Water 2,499 -275 25,550 -1,836
5 River Teifi Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 2,232 -347 22,288 -6,083
6 River Severn Severn Trent Water 2,809 -248 21,458 -8,778
7 River Tamar South West Water 2,001 2 21,237 865
8 River Aire Yorkshire Water 3,997 -891 21,191 -8,266
9 River Calder Yorkshire Water 3,373 -804 19,525 -13,207
10 River Great Ouse Anglian Water 1,329 802 17,602 12,965
11 River Welland Anglian Water 1,176 696 17,275 11,877
12 River Avon Severn Trent Water 1,680 550 16,455 6,268
13 River Nene Anglian Water 2,031 885 16,309 9,266
14 River Tawe Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 2,173 -419 16,144 -6,632
15 River Frome Wessex Water 2,048 265 16,043 4,223
16 River Derwent Severn Trent Water 2,675 -57 15,729 -847
17 River Wharfe Yorkshire Water 1,944 -512 14,799 -8,320
18 River Usk Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 1,761 -103 14,743 -695
19 River Wye Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 2,014 -10 14,640 787
20 River Rother Southern Water 1,141 -96 14,178 -1,552

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.

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