With growing awareness around water quality issues, it’s time for a consistent, collaborative approach to help people assess risks quickly and clearly.
An outdated approach
For over a decade, we’ve issued sewage alerts through our app, but the landscape has shifted.
Today, every water company in England publishes sewage discharge data —but its presentation is still far too confusing. Red alerts on our app, purple markers elsewhere, and even conflicting statuses across maps leave water users in a fog of uncertainty.
Why? Because each water company applies models (or none at all) to assess how discharges affect bathing waters. This patchwork system makes running a national sewage alert service incredibly challenging.
But change is on the horizon
We’re thrilled to announce that Surfers Against Sewage is now part of an OFWAT-funded UK Water Industry project aimed at standardizing sewage alerts. As a member of the project’s steering group, we’re working to ensure that future alerts are consistent, clear, and science-led, helping everyone make safer decisions about entering the water.
The project is ambitious, but the goals are worth celebrating:
- Develop cutting-edge tools for understanding bathing water quality.
- Create a unified, national sewage alert system with a shared methodology.
- Reduce health risks for water users with clearer, more reliable information.
This is a huge step forward for water safety and transparency, and we’re honored to represent the voices of water users in this vital project.