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Estimated 945,000 tonnes of sewage pumped into sea

Jason Arunn Murugesu
BBC News, North East and Cumbria
BBC The section of coast where Whitburn pipe sits. A bank of long grass sweeps down on to a mainly sandy stretch of beach with a calm sea lapping at the shore. To the left, beyond an area of benches and a lawn, a few buildings can be seen. Two people sit on benches while another is walking on the beach in the distance. There is a large bank of high cloud and an area of clearer sky.BBC
Northumbrian Water said the estimate, which the company itself produced, could not be "relied on"

Nearly one million tonnes of raw sewage is estimated to have been released from a pumping station into the North Sea in 2024.

Northumbrian Water produced the figure for releases from its site at Whitburn after an Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) request from South Tyneside resident Steve Lavelle.

It calculated 944,673 tonnes of sewage had been pumped into the sea, a slight drop from its number for 2023 of 1.007 million tonnes.

But the firm said its figure was just an estimate and "it cannot be relied on".

When asked about the 2023 estimate, Northumbrian Water CEO Heidi Mottram told a parliamentary committee earlier this month that the figure was "not necessarily accurate" but was "probably not unreasonable".

The one million tonne figure was provided by Northumbrian Water in June 2024 following several unsuccessful Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) requests from Mr Lavelle.

It was only released after a first-tier tribunal ruled the firm had to provide such figures.

UK Parliament Heidi Mottram. She has a bob haircut and white buttoned cardigan. She is wearing an orange visitors lanyard. She is giving evidence to a parliamentary select committee.UK Parliament
Northumbrian Water's chief executive Heidi Mottram was quizzed by a select committee earlier this month

The area along the Whitburn coast is part of the Durham special area of conservation.

Prof Darren Grocke, a biogeochemist at Durham University, said although the figures for 2024 were lower than 2023 it was still "an enormous amount of sewage discharge that will certainly have an impact on the coastal and marine environment".

Prof Charles Tyler, an environmental biologist at the University of Exeter, said it was "extremely difficult" to assess the impacts of raw sewage on ocean wildlife.

"But chemicals that are harmful to wildlife are generally found at much higher concentrations in raw sewage compared to the treated effluents discharged into our rivers," he said.

"Against a backdrop of uncertainty, the fact that annually almost a million tonnes of sewage continues to be discharged into the North Sea from Whitburn cannot be good for the health of the ocean in that locality."

Northumbrian Water said: "We are working very hard to drive down our reliance on storm overflows across the North East."

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