DOZENS of people gathered at a wastewater treatment works in Gower and left messages urging Welsh Water to reduce spills which end up in the sea.
Posters and messages were attached to the gates of the treatment works at Bishopston expressing frustration and calling on the utility to better future-proof its infrastructure.
It was organised by resident David Haines-Hanham, who said he was paddle-boarding with his daughter Mabli a couple of years ago when they noticed a brown slick in the sea at Brandy Cove, just south of Bishopston.
He claimed the slick was above an outfall pipe which he said extended around 250m into the sea at Brandy Cove at high tide and told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the smell was “unmistakeable”. He said: “We just wanted to get straight out of there.”
Mr Haines-Hanham said on another occasion he saw a brown slick in the water at Brandy Cove around 12 hours before the arrival of a named autumn storm. He claimed it hadn’t rained for two days beforehand.
Another time, he said, his young son Emlyn had a bad stomach after playing in a rock pool which retained a cloudy appearance after being stirred up, although he said he couldn’t prove something in the water was the cause of the illness.
More recently the 49-year-old said he was helping to organise a free coasteering session for Bishopston Primary School pupils at Brandy Cove when he was notified on his phone about a sewage release, although it wasn’t clear where it had occurred.
Welsh Water said it understood there was an increased concern about water quality and that it would invest £2.5 billion in environmental projects between 2025 and 2030 on top of £1.4 billion spent in the previous 10 years.
Welsh Water data indicates that there were just over 30 hours of spillages from Bishopston wastewater treatment works in 2022, just under 89 hours in 2023, and 367 hours in 2024 – the first few months of which were particularly wet.
Mr Haines-Hanham, whose wife Sally runs a coasteering and adventure activity business called Rip N Rock, said he believed bathing water quality improved in the 1990s but that, in his view, Welsh Water hadn’t done enough after that to ensure its assets were future-proofed.
“We expect the money from our bills to address the situation,” he said. “Put it where it’s supposed to be.”
Mr Haines-Hanham, of Brandy Cove Road, said 74 people turned up at last Saturday’s Bishopston demonstration, and that he took all but a couple of the posters down later on.
He said he’d wanted to give young people a voice, and hoped people elsewhere would organise grassroots action at wastewater treatment works if they felt strongly about it.
Untreated wastewater enters rivers and seas from combined sewer overflows when the system is at risk of being overwhelmed. It can also enter watercourses via emergency overflows if there is a failure at a treatment works. Wrongly connected pipework in homes and businesses adds capacity pressures.
Bishopston councillor Lyndon Jones has been holding regular meetings with Welsh Water representatives about spills and posting updates on social media.
Cllr Jones said Brandy Cove was not subject to water quality testing during the bathing season by environment body Natural Resources Wales, and that he would look at trying to get it added to its list along with Pwll Du beach to the west. “This really needs to change,” he said.
Cllr Jones attended last Saturday’s gathering at Bishopston and said he stood “shoulder to shoulder” with those present.
Welsh Water bills are set to rise by 42% by 2029-30. The utility said this will fund additional investment to benefit the environment. It has previously said it has spill monitors on 99% of its combined sewer overflows and that their operation was subject to permitting and monitoring by NRW.
Last month Welsh Water was fined £1.35 million for failing to properly monitor water quality at 300 sites. It related to offences in 2020 and 2021, to which it had pleaded guilty. Welsh Water said the failures were a very small proportion of its overall monitoring programme and that it had a strong record of compliance before and after 2020 and 2021.
Last year water industry regulator Ofwat placed Welsh Water into its lowest “lagging behind” category again on performance and required it to update its service commitment plans.
Responding to the protest at Bishopston, Welsh Water said storm overflows – which include combined sewer overflows – played a vital role in preventing homes being flooded following heavy rain. Removing them entirely, it said, would cost £9-£14 billion and involve digging up almost every street in Wales.
It said its £1.4 billion investment over the last decade had helped ensure Wales has almost a quarter of the UK’s Blue Flag beaches despite having 15% of its coastline, and that the latest bathing water results for Wales showed that 98% of designated waters met stringent quality standards – with nearly 70% meeting the highest “excellent” standard.
A spokesman said: “A number of factors can impact water quality including surface water run-off, misconnections – as we saw recently in a social media video shared of waste on the rocks between Langland and Rotherslade – rural land use and poorly maintained private septic tanks.
“We have been meeting regularly with the council and community groups, as well as holding coffee shop drop in sessions, all of which we will continue.”
