Southern Water

Responsible for at least 29,355 sewage overflows in 2024

On average 80.4 times a day

These lasted for 304,536 hours

That's 35.25 years!

Affecting 830 different locations across their service area

Map showing CSO locations for Southern 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

Southern Water has 6 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 . SRN0006

Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven

Started 3 months ago

2 . SRN0048

Bexhill and Battle

Started 1 week ago

3 . SRN0474

Chichester

Started 3 hours ago

4 . SRN0601

Tunbridge Wells

Started 2 hours ago

5 . SRN0660

Gillingham and Rainham

Started 3 months ago

6 . SRN9088

Herne Bay and Sandwich

Started 4 months ago

How many Sewage Overflows are dumping sewage?

We have live data for Southern 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 Southern 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.

Southern Water is highlighted in the plot below

2024 - Worst Locations: Southern Water

1 . LAVANT WWTW

Chichester

River Lavant

6,829 hours - That's 9.48 months.

287 incidents - 5.5 times a week, on average

2 . KINGS SOMBORNE WWTW

Romsey and Southampton North

River Test

5,481 hours - That's 7.61 months.

252 incidents - 4.8 times a week, on average

3 . HAM LANE LEWES SETTLES STORM TANK

Lewes

Tidal River Ouse

4,824 hours - That's 6.7 months.

259 incidents - 5 times a week, on average

4 . HAMMERWOOD ROAD ASHURST WOOD WPS

Sussex Weald

Shovelstrode Stream

4,130 hours - That's 5.74 months.

193 incidents - 3.7 times a week, on average

5 . HAWKHURST NORTH WWTW

Tunbridge Wells

Hexden Channel

4,084 hours - That's 5.67 months.

213 incidents - 4.1 times a week, on average

6 . SANDOWN WWTW

Isle of Wight East

English Channel

4,081 hours - That's 5.67 months.

283 incidents - 5.4 times a week, on average

2024 - Rivers Polluted by Southern Water

1 . River Rother

14,178 hours

- That's 1.64 years!

1,141 incidents - On average 3.1 times a day

2 . Freshwater River

13,841 hours

- That's 1.6 years!

1,986 incidents - On average 5.4 times a day

3 . Solent

10,371 hours

- That's 1.2 years!

1,261 incidents - On average 3.5 times a day

4 . River Test

9,627 hours

- That's 1.11 years!

556 incidents - On average 1.5 times a day

5 . River Blackwater

7,474 hours

- That's 10.38 months.

417 incidents - On average 1.1 times a day

6 . Hexden Channel

6,487 hours

- That's 9.01 months.

426 incidents - On average 1.2 times a day

2024 - Beaches Polluted by Southern Water

1 . Littlehampton

5,115 hours

- That's 7.1 months.

450 incidents - On average 1.2 times a day

2 . Sandown, Shanklin, Yaverland, Whitecliff Bay

4,081 hours

- That's 5.67 months.

283 incidents - 5.4 times a week, on average

3 . Bognor Regis East, Felpham, Middleton-on-sea

4,059 hours

- That's 5.64 months.

226 incidents - 4.3 times a week, on average

4 . Cowes, Gurnard

3,058 hours

- That's 4.25 months.

510 incidents - On average 1.4 times a day

5 . Bognor Regis East, Felpham

2,527 hours

- That's 3.51 months.

128 incidents - 2.5 times a week, on average

6 . Bembridge, Seagrove, St Helens

2,316 hours

- That's 3.22 months.

194 incidents - 3.7 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!