Protesters will paddle out at Brighton’s West Pier this weekend to call for an end to sewage pollution.
Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) will call for an end to sewage discharges into Britain’s rivers and seas in co-ordinated protests at 30 locations across the country on Saturday (18 May).
Olympian and keen paddle-boarder Dame Kelly Holmes is due to join protesters in Brighton from 11.30am.
Brighton SAS representative Stuart Davies said “The time for talking is over.
“People in this city are literally falling sick when entering the water and they are sick with these large investment companies like Southern Water’s owners that run our water infrastructure into the ground to suck out money and literally leave us with the sh*t to deal with.
“The whole system is broken and the people here have had enough.”
SAS is calling for an end to sewage discharges into all bathing waters and high-priority nature sites by 2030.
In 2023, there were 584,001 recorded discharges across England, Scotland and Wales – a 51 per cent increase on the previous year – with sewage released into waterways for a total of more than 4.6 million hours.
Double gold medal-winning Olympian Dame Kelly Holmes said: “I love nothing more than getting out into the open water on my paddle-board.
“It does wonders for my mental health, and there’s such a sense of community among those who use our wild waterways for sport and recreation.
“But this incredibly special pastime has been tainted for all of us by the persistent risk of getting sick from pollution.
“The poor state of our rivers and seas is shocking and infuriating. Whole generations are being deprived of the right to safely enjoy the benefits that blue spaces offer.
“Our waterways are for us and should be here to enjoy as they are so important for our collective health and wellbeing. Events costing thousands are getting cancelled.
“To see our rivers and seas being treated so appallingly by those responsible for looking after them is nothing short of a national scandal.
“I’m paddling out with Surfers Against Sewage and thousands of water-lovers across the country because I’m passionate about our waterways, I’m angry about what’s being done to them and I want the polluters and those in power to hear our demands to end sewage pollution now.”
When Brighton and Hove residents and visitors saw foul-smelling brown sludge on local beaches last weekend, many on social media assumed this was a sewage discharge.
The Environment Agency said that it was actually algal bloom, or May rot, which occurs when algae grows in the warmer weather and then dies off and decomposes.
Let’s all swim in sewage to end sewage
Good of them to focus on Brighton seafront with its lack of sewage. I do hope that they point out that it is not a problem here due to the investment in the large storage facility under the front. Brighton tourism does not need any further challenges
Every single beach in the UK has sewage discharged into its water, Brighton is not exempt from this so yes it is a problem in Brighton just as it is a problem in every beach on the UK, some are cleaner than others but all of the beaches in the UK have some amount of sewage pollution in there waters.
These activists are so obsessed with campaigning that they don’t even bother to check facts.
They also seem to think that renationalising water companies will suddenly solve all the problems, even where they don’t exist.
There’s a pretty strong argument for renationalisation. The grilling Southern Water got today at the Environmental Audit Committee highlights this yet again.
Sorry, Ofwat, even worse – the regulator.