Northumbrian Water

Responsible for at least 40,792 sewage overflows in 2024

On average 111.8 times a day

These lasted for 246,586 hours

That's 28.54 years!

Affecting 1,346 different locations across their service area

Map showing CSO locations for Northumbrian Water

We need your support!

We managed to raise £150 in 2024. That's not enough to keep the site running. Please consider a one-off or small recurring donation.

Donate Now

Northumbrian Water has 23 CSOs dumping sewage right now

Here are the ones that have been overflowing for the longest, without interruption

We are getting more data collated for each of the CSOs... right now we just have the Constituency. Unfortunately, the water companies use different names for the CSOs in their live data than in the annual returns, so it will take a bit of time to link all the data up....

1 . NES0021

Tynemouth

Started 1 month ago

2 . NES0106

City of Durham

Started 1 month ago

3 . NES0149

Blaydon and Consett

Started 2 days ago

4 . NES0161

Penrith and Solway

Started 4 weeks ago

5 . NES0231

Gateshead Central and Whickham

Started 2 hours ago

6 . NES0248

Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West

Started 3 months ago

7 . NES0300

Tynemouth

Started 4 months ago

8 . NES0307

Tynemouth

Started 4 months ago

9 . NES0442

Darlington

Started 2 months ago

How many Sewage Overflows are dumping sewage?

We have live data for Northumbrian Water so we can track what happens every day - given that overflows are supposed to happen on an 'exceptional' basis only - does the chart indicate that?

Total CSOs monitored

CSOs overflowing (30+ mins)

CSOs offline (30+ mins)

There is daily updated information on all constituencies covered by Northumbrian Water

2024 - By Water Company

How does each water company compare? These are the totals by company for each. The totals are really high, counting things in hours doesn't make it very easy to think about. Here we show how many years of continuous sewage dumps happened in a single year, by water company.

2024 - Asset Spill Duration Comparison

It isn't like there are just a few outliers... the problem exists across the entire estate of water assets. Here we show a 'cumulative frequency diagram' - where the number of CSOs that dumped sewage for a time, or longer, is shown. You can see that many CSOs dumped sewage into a river for months and months.

Northumbrian Water is highlighted in the plot below

2024 - Worst Locations: Northumbrian Water

1 . MILFIELD SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS

North Northumberland

Unnamed River Till

5,365 hours - That's 7.45 months.

261 incidents - 5 times a week, on average

2 . HOWDON STW

Tynemouth

River Tyne Saline Estuary

4,625 hours - That's 6.42 months.

457 incidents - On average 1.3 times a day

3 . COTHERSTONE SEWAGE TREATMENT WORKS

Bishop Auckland

River Balder

4,350 hours - That's 6.04 months.

228 incidents - 4.4 times a week, on average

4 . ALLENDALE STW

Hexham

River East Allen

3,980 hours - That's 5.53 months.

202 incidents - 3.9 times a week, on average

5 . FELTON STW

North Northumberland

Coquet

3,721 hours - That's 5.17 months.

288 incidents - 5.5 times a week, on average

6 . WAGONWAY ROAD PUMPING STATION

Jarrow and Gateshead East

River Tyne Saline Estuary

2,946 hours - That's 4.09 months.

179 incidents - 3.4 times a week, on average

2024 - Rivers Polluted by Northumbrian Water

1 . River Tyne Saline Estuary

12,156 hours

- That's 1.41 years!

1,394 incidents - On average 3.8 times a day

2 . Wear

10,244 hours

- That's 1.19 years!

1,290 incidents - On average 3.5 times a day

3 . River Tees

8,585 hours

- That's 11.92 months.

1,128 incidents - On average 3.1 times a day

4 . River Wear

8,298 hours

- That's 11.53 months.

1,421 incidents - On average 3.9 times a day

5 . Unnamed River Till

5,365 hours

- That's 7.45 months.

261 incidents - 5 times a week, on average

6 . River Blyth

4,749 hours

- That's 6.6 months.

563 incidents - On average 1.5 times a day

2024 - Beaches Polluted by Northumbrian Water

1 . Druridge Bay North

1,575 hours

- That's 2.19 months.

110 incidents - 2.1 times a week, on average

2 . Spittal

1,573 hours

- That's 2.18 months.

780 incidents - On average 2.1 times a day

3 . Marske Sands

1,127 hours

- That's 1.57 months.

198 incidents - 3.8 times a week, on average

4 . Crimdon

1,094 hours

- That's 1.52 months.

109 incidents - 2.1 times a week, on average

5 . Newbiggin North, Newbiggin South

745 hours

- That's 1.03 months.

120 incidents - 2.3 times a week, on average

6 . Saltburn

743 hours

- That's 1.03 months.

123 incidents - 2.4 times a week, on average

Water Companies

These water companies are responsible for managing sewage treatment and preventing pollution in our waterways.

Anglian Water

Dwr Cymru Welsh Water

Northumbrian Water

Scottish Water

Severn Trent Water

South West Water

Southern Water

Thames Water

United Utilities

Wessex Water

Yorkshire Water

Data Sources & Accuracy

EDM (Event Duration Monitoring) data and Consented Discharges to Controlled Waters with Conditions from Environment Agency & Data Map Wales, and Scottish Water

Experimental derived data from Thames Water API, Some data may be missing or inaccurate. This uses Environment Agency rainfall data from the real-time data API (Beta) - Rainfall data is delayed by up to two days.

This website is intended to provide an accurate representation of the Environment Agency data. The data is hard to use, and thus some errors may have been made. If you find something that is incorrect, please raise an issue at the GitHub issues page and we'll endeavour to fix it quickly.

This project is not associated, approved or endorsed by any of the companies whose logos you see here.

Analysing sewage pollution by the Water Industry

Media Queries

Get in touch if you have queries or want to discuss our data.

press [at] top-of-the-poops.org

Please Support Us

We rely on donations to fund our work. Please support us if you can

Yes! Support TOTP!