There were at least 361,103 "sewage spills" into rivers in 2022, lasting an almost unbelievable 2,207,527 hours

A map, in brown all the rivers that received more than 24 hours of sewage dumps in 2022

Rivers Ranked for 2022

Here are the top rivers in England and Wales that had sewage overflows in 2022. 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 Unknown South West Water 2,045 86 19,395 2,764
2 River Calder Yorkshire Water 2,968 -1,087 18,079 -9,821
3 River Severn Severn Trent Water 2,268 -388 17,495 -11,245
4 River Garw Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 834 304 16,134 9,559
5 River Tamar South West Water 1,523 -235 15,546 -1,814
6 River Teifi Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 1,889 4 14,079 -1,656
7 River Tawe Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 1,818 211 13,981 727
8 River Aire Yorkshire Water 3,571 -514 13,810 -7,329
9 River Irwell United Utilities 2,385 -347 12,939 -1,416
10 River Eden United Utilities 1,692 -101 11,780 -3,842
11 River Ellen United Utilities 882 189 11,730 1,694
12 River Usk Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 1,560 -198 11,040 -3,813
13 River Tame United Utilities 2,064 439 11,012 2,912
14 River Wharfe Yorkshire Water 1,687 -471 10,798 -2,462
15 Mersey Estuary United Utilities 1,077 -51 10,313 1,511
16 River Rother Southern Water 784 -156 9,965 -2,347
17 River Rhymney Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 1,551 46 9,827 567
18 River Ouse Yorkshire Water 1,656 -443 9,755 -7,560
19 River Taff Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 1,115 -48 9,562 -2,045
20 River Taf Dwr Cymru Welsh Water 636 -127 9,240 -2,538

Data Sources & Accuracy

EDM (Event Duration Monitoring) data and Consented Discharges to Controlled Waters with Conditions from Environment Agency & Data Map Wales

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.

Top of the Poops

Analysing sewage pollution by the Water Industry

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