Cut the crap

George Pepper has been fishing from Brighton's groynes for more than 48 years and thinks there's something fishy about the water. "You wouldn't catch me swimming in it," he says, "They test it, and say the water's excellent, but I don't believe it. There's no blue flag, so it can't be clean." Rumours abound about the state of Brighton's seawater. Some say it's fine to swim, others are cautious, especially if they have cuts or sores. Some refuse point blank to go in, fearing cold and pollution. Neither Brighton nor Hove beaches have Blue Flags, which makes many, like George, suspicious.

The council has an explanation: "We've never applied for Blue Flags, although Brighton's water results have been good and Hove's excellent. Because Brighton remains borderline, we could apply for a flag, get it, and then lose it. Because losing a Blue Flag looks bad in the media, we never thought it worth applying for one."

Local bathing water does, these days, meet and exceed EC minimum standards, but many people remember, with a shudder, sanitary towels on the beach. Is it clean now you can't see the dirt? And what happens when you flush the toilet? Unfortunately, the answer is related more closely than you might think to how clean the seawater is - everything from your house ends up in the sewer, where it joins a soup of dirty water, rain water and run-off, shit, piss, oil, fat, detergent and cleaning chemicals. This flows to Telscombe's Portobello sewage plant where it undergoes 'preliminary' treatment - filtering for large solids and grit. It is then discharged with no further treatment through a 3.1km long sea outfall.

Despite this, since the completion of the new stormwater tunnel, which holds vast quantities of mixed sewage and rainwater until pumped out at Portobello, Brighton & Hove's beaches usually pass the EC's mandatory quality level. In summer, weekly samples are taken by the Environment Agency from Duke's Mound, Brighton, St Aubyns, Hove and Saltdean and tested for bacteria levels to the European Commission mandatory standard. These often reach the more stringent 'guideline' level in the same directive, which is 20 times higher. Brighton & Hove Council tests to the same standards, and posts the results on the seafront, in The Argus and on The Internet. 'Good' means the mandatory standard has been met, and 'excellent' the guideline standard.

But EC minimum standards, date from 1976. Tighter laws are planned but will take time. Current tests count levels of coliform bacteria which indicate the presence of sewage. But they do not test for more reliable bacterial indicators, faecal streptococci, which cause gastro-enteritis, or for viruses. Water passing at the mandatory level can still contain sewage-derived bacteria known to cause illness, so standards are the bare minimum. "You can't always see sewage, so it's easy to think it's not there," says Richard Gregory of Brighton Surfers Against Sewage. "But when there is heavy rainfall, the sea tastes peppery, and you can smell detergent. You can't pretend. It's shocking that Southern Water puts huge quantities of raw sewage into the sea without sterilizing it."

Southern Water's sewage plant at Shoreham is currently being altered to provide treatment to remove 75-99 per cent of bacteria, under EC Urban Wastewater Directive. But the recent refusal of its planning application to upgrade the Portobello works means that it is now in breach of the Directive. Southern Water has been forced to apply again. It is clearly still keen to build at Portobello, but is having to consider other sites, like Black Rock and Newhaven. It could be ten years before Brighton meets European standards.

Chris Sharp, SW Wastewater Manager, says, "Nobody is suggesting that having a preliminary-treated discharge a mile off the coast is where we want to be, but we're generally proud of our bathing water quality. Based on the oceanography I don't think there is any real risk to anybody off Portobello."

Saltdean's Campaign for Residents Against Portobello (CRAP), does have an issue with health risks at their beach by the outfall. The beach is recommended in the Good Beach Guide, but regular swimmers are skeptical of testing methods and criteria. Christina Carruthers explains, "The inspectors go in a metre deep, and put the sample container down 30cm. But we swim out much further. You can easily swim or windsurf into a sewage slick."

Local residents were also fierce opponents of the Portobello plans. Their objection was partly because the land is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but were also frustrated that Southern Water's plans went no further than their minimum legal obligations, and no disinfecting treatment was included. Campaigners want UV treatment or microfiltration, which target bacteria and viruses in the water.

Chris Sharp says, "Southern Water has spent over £1 billion on coastal water improvements, but the industry is not funded to meet bathing water criteria at discharge point. We're a utility, we don't set EC standards. One of our key goals is to meet those standards." But critics claim that the cost of tertiary treatments is not prohibitive for a company which boosted parent Scottish Power's profits last year by £221m. "UV and microfiltration treatments might sound complex and difficult, but are relatively low-tech," says Richard Gregory. "They should be used everywhere. Everyone who has contact with the sea should be protected from viral infection."

In Brighton, before completion of the stormwater tunnel, Combined Sewage Overflows along the beach would discharge unfiltered sewage straight into the sea up to 30 times a year. When the tunnel was designed, to prevent raw sewage bubbling up through street manholes in extreme weather, it was predicted that only once every 50 years would the tunnel be so full that the two other CSOs would discharge. Unfortunately, during last year's torrential rainfall, Brighton's CSO went off, in July, October and November. The CSOs are located in the groyne to the west of the Palace Pier and at Portslade, where dead rats, condoms, shit and tampons can spew out in very bad weather.

The only time beach cleaner, Delphine Sicard has smelled sewage on the beach was on that groyne one stormy day, with no idea the CSO was beneath her. "It was very windy and there was a lot of spray. It splashed in my face, and I could really smell sewage then." In 1999 at Dawlish beach in Devon, eight-year-old Heather Preen died of E coli after stepping in a puddle under a CSO. The coroner recommended UV treatment at the site, and warning signs at all CSOs. A sign at Dawlish now reads: Caution - untreated sewage sometimes discharges at this point.

Palace Pier management believes the CSO has never affected the pier; but is not notified when it discharges. Southern Water informs the Environment Agency when the CSO goes off, which then informs the council. Southern Water says it is happy to inform anyone who asks if a CSO has discharged, but a council spokesman says, "It's not the council's responsibility to inform the public. We wouldn't like a sign saying 'raw sewage might come out here', as it might be once every 50 years. People's livelihoods are based on confidence in our seawater and 99.9 per cent of the time that's justified." But Richard Gregory says "I'd wait until there had been a lot of sunshine and offshore winds before going for a swim. Sunshine increases the micro-organisms that eat nasty stuff and offshore winds blow any debris away."

Sea water: the facts
Depending on the weather, between 21 and 172 Olympic-size swimming pools worth of filtered sewage are released from Portobello every day.

Brighton is one of three major resorts without UV sewage disinfection, along with Eastbourne and Blackpool. It is also one of twelve coastal towns which failed to meet EU emission standards by 2000.

Blooming or rotting algae is commonly mistaken for sewage. Phaeocystis, a common blooming algae, forms a brown frothy scum which can be whipped by strong winds into a foam up to 2m thick. If blown ashore, it decomposes into a brown slime with sulphurous smells similar to sewage.

Bacteria and viruses from the human gut have been found in dormant states at ocean depths of over 1,000m.
Last year a mysterious, large amount of fat-balls was washed up on Brighton beaches. Many believe the fat to have come from the sewers, but Southern Water believes there may be a wrecked ship full of tallow off the coast and that the fat came from it. Environment Agency tests were inconclusive.

At Shoreham power station, seawater from the harbour is taken in for cooling purposes. It is released back into the Channel at a rate of 5.5 million gallons an hour, with a small amount of chlorine added, and 12º warmer. This is the 'hot-pipe' - one of the most popular surf spots for miles around.

Don't flush anything down the toilet that you wouldn't want to come face to face with in the sea. Do, however, feel free to have a wee in the sea whilst swimming, as your urine ends up there anyway.

copyright New Insight 2001

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