After the first heavy rain in months, Thames Water dumped sewage from its Oxford treatment works for two days.

Thames Water started releasing sewage from its Grenoble Road works on Sunday afternoon with the discharges continuing on Monday, according to Oxford Thames Sewage Alerts, an automatic notification Twitter account.

Thames21, which runs the Oxford Rivers Project, said: "In our view, it’s totally unacceptable that raw sewage ever goes into our beautiful rivers.

"Thames Water need to prioritise their investment in sewerage infrastructure to stop these unacceptable discharges of raw sewage into the Thames."

Oxford Mail:

Thames Water also started releasing sewage from its Witney treatment works on Sunday afternoon with the discharges continuing on Monday.

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The Evenlode Catchment Partnership (ECP) said Thames Water "continue to prioritise their shareholders profits over environmental health".

A spokesperson said: "From its research the Evenlode Catchment Partnership based in West Oxford can state that sewage pollution is the main source of river pollution.

"This is a chronic and continuous source of pollution with the recent dumping of untreated sewage particularly damaging as it entered rivers still at very low levels following the recent droughts."

It said lack of investment in infrastructure since privatisation in the late 1980s and weak regulation by the Environment Agency and OFWAT meant sewage dumping is "a cheap method of sewage management".

"But much of it is often illegal, but most devastating for the environment."

In November 2021 Thames Water was fined £4 million for a 30-hour discharge of an estimated half a million litres of raw sewage into the Seacourt and Hinksey streams on 24 and 25 July 2016.

Oxford Mail:

Thames Water had accrued £32.4million in fines since 2017 for 11 cases of water pollution.

Last Christmas after traditional festive swims were cancelled due to a sewage release over 500 people attended a protest on Port Meadow.

Wolvercote Mill Stream, north of Port Meadow, was given Designated Bathing Water Status this year, however, fears remain over pollution caused by the dumping of raw sewage upstream.

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Thames Water said the latest discharges were due to the heavy rainfall over the weekend.

A spokesperson said: "Our storm tanks at Oxford STW became full and discharged to the river, as they are designed to do and in accordance with the site's permit.

"We regard all discharges of untreated sewage as unacceptable and are working hard to accelerate work to stop them being necessary across our catchment area."

 

 

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