Sewage: West Dorset
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of sewage discharges from combined sewer overflows at (a) Charmouth West Stream and (b) Lyme Regis Church Cliff Beach in the last 12 months.
Answered by Emma Hardy
For too long, water companies have discharged unacceptable levels of sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas.
It is the responsibility of water companies to invest in infrastructure and other improvements to reduce untreated wastewater pollution incidents. The Price Review 24 programme, which runs from 2025-2030, will see Wessex Water investing £580 million to reduce the use of storm overflows. This investment includes the following actions to protect the River Lim and Church Cliff bathing water in Lyme Regis:
- Uplyme sewage treatment works and Gun Cliff sewage pumping station will be fitted with certified flow monitoring equipment,
- Improvements to Uplyme storm sewage tanks,
- Improvements to the Cobb sewage pumping station,
- Two combined sewage overflows (CSO) are to be investigated and assessed in relation to the possible impact on water quality,
- Five further CSOs to be improved to meet the bathing water standard of no more than 2 spills per bathing season
- An investigation will be undertaken to confirm the benefits of these works for Church Cliff beach.
There are no improvements identified in the Price Review 24 programme specifically for the West Stream in Charmouth.
The Environment Agency (EA) is not currently pursuing any enforcement action in the Charmouth Lyme Regis area. However, water company assets in the Char and Lim catchments may be inspected as part of the EA’s new water industry regulation inspection programme. The EA will continue to monitor all this work to ensure the quality of the River Lim and Church Cliff beach further improves.
Full details of the storm water overflows in the area are available here and information on Lyme Regis Church Cliff Beach is available here.
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