Environmental water quality

Our vision

Our aim is to ensure that any disposal of sewage poses a minimal risk to receiving waters.

What steps are needed?

We believe we need to:

• manage sewerage and sewage treatment to ensure that standards are achieved and agreed environmental outcomes are met
• encourage minimal use at source of toxic and non-biodegradable substances.

Where are we now?

We currently take away and treat 481 million litres of sewage from 2.7 million customers a day. This is equivalent to about 1,924 Olympic size swimming pools.

Treating this sewage to a sufficient standard to protect the receiving rivers and coastal waters, as well as public heath, is therefore very important.

Currently we:

• treat sewage to meet compliance levels and upgrade our treatment processes to meet changing legislation, like the Water Framework Directive (WFD)
• consider population growth and new development when maintaining, upgrading and constructing sewerage and treatment systems
• extend sewerage services to remote areas currently not connected to our system
• continue preparations for the WFD – its target good ecological and chemical status of water bodies by 2027
• treat sludge to levels safe for disposal, with the majority sent to farmland as fertiliser.

During 2009-10:

• 100% compliance with mandatory bathing water standards was achieved for the fifth year running
• bathing waters have had 76.6% compliance with the stricter guideline standards. These can be greatly influenced by rainfall and bacteria from urban and rural sources, as well as sewerage storm overflows
• seven first-time sewerage schemes providing sewage treatment for small communities
• 13 phosphorus removal schemes to further reduce our environmental inputs of nutrients to sensitive rivers.

We have achieved:

• 99.7% compliance for satisfactory discharges to watercourses
• the completion of six first-time sewerage schemes, exceeding our AMP4 target for the number of connecting properties. This work programme provides communities with connection to the sewerage network, to help overcome any public health or environmental problems from septic tank, cesspool or other forms of sewage disposal
• the completion of all projects in our five-year programme for the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (UWWTD) – installation of our nitrogen removal at Poole STW was completed in December 2008
• completion of sewerage investigations to identify the impact of storm overflows on the watercourses in Bristol – these have identified further improvements, now included in our next five-year business plan
• continued involvement in the review of the WFD
• 100% compliance with the satisfactory disposal of sewage sludge.

For further information on our environmental water quality work see:

Intermittent discharges
Streamclean team