I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about monitoring and reporting of water quality in bathing water sites in coastal areas; and for connected purposes.
I am proud to represent some of the finest and cleanest beaches in the world. North Devon is home to the UK’s only world surf reserve, and the only cold water surf reserve in the world. I must declare an interest as I surf—badly—and was in last weekend. I am proud of this Government’s work to take the monitoring of storm overflows from just 6% in 2010 to 100% last year. However, this data is abused along our coastlines and often scares people out of the water. We know that something comes out of a pipe, but we have no idea what it contains.
The Bill seeks to expedite the testing of what is in an overflow pipe, and to define what is and what is not raw sewage. Despite asking numerous questions of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I am still unable to explain to anyone how an overflow pipe that contains at least 95% rainwater can still be defined as raw sewage. Legal definitions online are clear that raw sewage should consist primarily of human faeces and water. It is not the water where the bacteria hang out—clearly, the more water, the more diluted. My Bill relates to bathing waters at coastal sites, because clearly there is a major difference in the impact of an overflow event into something as environmentally sensitive and slow-moving as a chalk stream, compared with the massive tides, huge volume and fast-moving seawater of the Atlantic ocean. Saltwater itself can kill some bacteria.
We have seen a surge in year-round activity along our coasts, thanks to improved wetsuits and a growing number of hardy folk wild swimming. However, our bathing water season, which determines when our coastal waters are tested, runs only from May to September, meaning that when water-based tourism is still going strong in Devon there is no testing along our coasts. The bathing season data gives vital historical information about water quality. Although I warmly welcome DEFRA’s announcement yesterday that it plans to consult on a series of potential reforms, it will not resolve the misinformation and lack of immediate information after a storm overflow event.
This winter, tests took place to see if the season could be extended, but it is hard to replicate the Environment Agency’s testing regime with a test tube at the testing site just off the beach, during winter storms with 12-foot waves. Throughout the winter, bathers have to try to work out what is going on from the average of the previous summer’s data, along with details of the last storm overflow, despite having no information about what came out the pipe. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport advises that the Environment Agency provides the gold standard for whether bathing water is clean enough for sporting activities, despite the lack of data for half the year. One group of year-round bathers explained to me that they peer into the water and decide if they think it is safe to go in. Surely, we can do better than that.