I took my kids swimming at a British beach – then I received a terrifying message
Day-tripping to the UK seaside is so entrenched that it’s practically part of our national identity. And now it’s ruined
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Your support makes all the difference.Ah, the summer holidays. Time to sling a couple of towels in the car, pull on a swimsuit and take your family for a dip in the toilet. What?
If your first response to that is revulsion, you’re not alone. I took my two children away for a three-day trip to the seaside recently, and we returned to reports of sewage polluting Britain’s beaches at more than 50 holiday hotspots.
And not only that – I’m also currently panicking about the text message I received moments later, warning me that my kids have been put on a list to have a polio vaccine (or booster) because of traces of the virus in sewage in our borough. It seems that the theme we can’t escape this summer holiday isn’t boredom, or the perils of trying to get childcare, but sh**.
Campaign group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) has created an interactive map of the UK coastline which shows pollution risk warnings in place in dozens of locations – including my nearest beach, Southend-on-Sea. The Environment Agency (EA) also issued pollution alerts across the country; including for one of north Devon’s most popular beaches, Saunton Sands, which was classified as unsafe for swimming due to “pollution from sewage”.
Why is this happening? Well, private water companies discharged raw sewage into rivers in England more than 400,000 times last year, according to EA figures – which also reveal how sewage has been pumped into the environment more than a million times since 2016. And they’re allowed to do so, because the EA says they can.
It was agreed (and voted for) that utility companies could release contaminated water into our streams and rivers after extreme weather events – such as prolonged heavy rain – to protect properties from flooding and sewage systems from overflowing. The result is shameful: dozens of swimming spots along the British coastline, mired by waste.
And what a waste – for we have some of the prettiest coastlines in Europe. The allure of a day trip to the British seaside is so entrenched that it’s practically part of our national identity. When I think back to my childhood, I think of my nan taking me out for the afternoon to Frinton or Clacton-on-Sea. It was chintzy, it was brash and it was amazing. Ice cream was a certainty, fish and chips a luxury; with a go on the penny slots and arcades if we were lucky.
I’m so fond of this seaside vista (and nostalgia) that I am repeating it with my own children. Except that now, when it comes to paddling in the waves, I’m worried about their health.
This parental anxiety has only been exacerbated by the text message from the NHS warning me about the risk of polio. “The NHS is inviting children aged one to nine in your borough to receive a vaccine against polio,” it reads. “Traces of poliovirus have been found in sewage in some London boroughs.”
It goes on to explain the risks of the disease, which can lead in some rare cases to paralysis. Polio was eradicated in the UK in 2003, but it’s back. And it can be life-threatening.
Sewage with substantial risk of disease where we live; sewage in the sea where we go on holiday – the bad news just keeps coming. This weekend, analysis of EA data undertaken by the Lib Dems found nearly one in four UK sewage discharges went unmonitored last year – with 1,802 monitors installed by water companies not working for at least 90 per cent of the time, and a complete absence of monitors during 1,717 storm overflows.
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The Independent also revealed this week that all wastewater companies in England and Wales have failed to meet their targets to tackle pollution or sewage floods.
This shameful situation even resulted in a bizarre phone conversation between the prime minister’s sister, Rachel Johnson, and his dad – Stanley Johnson – on the former’s LBC radio talk show yesterday.
Stanley blamed his son’s administration for sewage being pumped into British waterways, and suggested that Brexit meant the Tories “felt able not to push” to stop the pollution as strongly as it might have were the UK still part of the EU.
Whether it’s Brexit’s fault, the Tory government’s fault or the fault of the water companies themselves, one thing seems stark and resonant: it is, as usual (as well as our marine life), ordinary people who will suffer. Ordinary families. Children. We should all be ashamed of the sewage in our waters. Ashamed and worried. And we should use that fear to demand change.