Blue Flags Summer Sand and Sewage

This relates to the post “Surfers Against Sewage are calling for 5 Thanet beaches to be stripped of their Blue Flag status” click on the link to read it http://thanetonline.blogspot.com/2010/08/surfers-against-sewage-are-calling-for.html

This is a high profile news story that is potentially damaging to our economy and to the Blue Flag status of our beaches.

Unfortunately this article coincided with a sewage pollution incident in Ramsgate last month, frankly looking at the history of sewage pollution for the last 13 years – the statistics about this are available on the environment agency’s website – this sort of incident happens occasionally at a great many of our beaches and I would think on a great many beaches worldwide.

A similar incident happened in Margate, July last year, there is an interactive map on the environment agency website and by dragging the map around and clicking on the appropriate place, you can view details of any major beach in the country, click on link for it http://maps.environment-agency.gov.uk/wiyby/wiybyController?value=CT11+8NY&submit=Search%09&lang=_e&ep=map&topic=coastalwaters&layerGroups=default&scale=4&textonly=off

Anyway yesterday I contacted Thanet District Council to see what they had to say about the pollution incident and publicity about the Blue Flag status of our beaches, I was only able to get their response to the media coverage of the “Surfers Against Sewage” article, click on the link to read it http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/810/id3.htm

OK this is where it gets a bit complicated, as far as water quality goes the Blue Flag status is based on testing carried out by the EA over a number of years, click on the link for the Ramsgate main Sands tests http://maps.environment-agency.gov.uk/wiyby/wiybyController?latest=true&topic=coastalwaters&ep=query&lang=_e&x=638683.9583333334&y=164857.83333333334&scale=4&layerGroups=1&queryWindowWidth=25&queryWindowHeight=25 this is a reasonable scientific approach for this purpose.

The problem however is that one criteria for Blue Flag status (criterion 28 click on the link for the whole thing http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/810/id4.htm ) says that if there is a pollution incident, then the blue flag comes down and warnings go up.

Now the EA tests happen on a Monday and the results take eight days to reach the council on Tuesday week, this means that using this method any sewage spill will have probably gone away by the time the council gets the results.

One way around this would be local processing of test samples but even this wouldn’t help that much as the bacteria takes 24 hours to grow, so once again you probably wouldn’t really know until it was too late.

So now we come to the problem of where the sewage comes from, working on the principle of whoever put it in the sea would be likely to know that they had done so.

If you look at the picture above you can see that the discharge (red stripe) near to the main sands was a large one compared to anything that happened recently during the summer months which is when these tests are done.

The only source that I can think of that would cause these levels of Faecal coliform bacteria is the emergency discharge outfall pipe opposite Granville Marina (about where Nero’s used to be)

What this does is to discharge what is in the sewer there when we have a particularly heavy rainfall and the sewer can’t cope, I don’t think records of daily rainfall here are available on the internet, click on the link for the monthly ones http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/manstondata.txt although these haven’t been made up to July yet.

During this period I was somewhat involved in concerns about the drains in Harbour Parade and believe I would have noticed any particularly heavy rainfall, we would be looking at one of the biggest summer storms in about ten years going on the previous records and I am sure this didn’t happen.

This then leaves us with some sort of accidental discharge, probably from the outfall pipe, my understanding here is that alarms should have been going off at Southern Water and that there should be some sort of procedure in place where they tell the council and the council put up signs at the beach.

Now the problem here is that if we don’t find a way here of alerting the council to serious sewage discharges and get them to implement the proper emergency plan, then we will lose our blue flag status.

I have tried contacting both the council and Southern Water about this, despite promises from both of them to contact me about this they haven’t.

Let me be clear about this, I don’t think this problem is peculiar to Thanet District Council, there are discharge outlets all around our coastline and the coastline of every densely populated part of the world.

What comes out of these pipes is regulated and controlled to a lesser or greater degree, this is dependent on a number of factors not the least of which is self regulation in industry.

It would be my guess that the situation in the UK is better controlled and documented than many countries.

Despite all of the legislation and apparent conformity to rules and regulations, we still appear to have a situation where it is possible to go to a blue flag beach, where nothing is apparently wrong and yet everyone is swimming around in sewage.

In Ramsgate I am conscious that this happened adjacent to where it is planned to build a major development without basic safety precautions strongly recommended by the environment agency.

In this case this can happen because the council have obeyed the letter of the law, the problem in this case and with the sewage leak is that these are safety issues, box ticking while ignoring public safety isn’t a viable solution.