Earlier today (Thursday 27th July 2023) Kevin met Susan Davey, the Chief Executive Officer of South West Water (SWW), at Meadfoot Beach for a discussion about some of the points which are regularly raised by residents relating to it, plus plans to resolve them in the longer term.
The focus of their discussions was the Ilsham Valley Pumping Station. Whilst it is next to the beach and is where the alerts for Meadfoot are produced from, the actual outflow is at Hope’s Nose, some distance away from the Beach. Hope’s Nose was retained as an emergency outlet for the sewer system, when the Brokenbury Treatment Plant opened two decades ago.
There will need to be work at the Ilsham Valley Pumping Station to both ensure it can deal with rainfall in the catchment area around it and to ensure any storm overflow from sewers is contained to end the use of Hope’s Nose as an outlet. A study of the catchment is underway, which is expected to report later this year and, in response to the points raised, it was agreed a written response about work planned and expected timescales to resolve the issues with storm overflow would be provided by the SWW team.
Also covered was an issue regularly raised by Tor Bay Harbour Authority about the alerts produced by the Environment Agency (EA) based on the data from the monitors at Meadfoot. The Harbour Authority is actively liaising with the EA to ensure any reduction to swimming water quality is clearly defined, rather than it being referred to as pollution at every event. Often the alerts connected to Meadfoot relate to rainfall run off, rather than a discharge of human waste. Yet due to a similar alert being created for both issues it is often described as being the later in commentary around Meadfoot Beach.
Finally, Ms Davey highlighted the information about Meadfoot and other beaches in our bay available on SWW’s Waterfit Website, this includes details of any alerts relating to issues with water quality (You can also check the most recent and how long it lasted) . You can find the section on Meadfoot by following this link:
https://www.southwestwater.co.uk/environment/waterfit/waterfitlive/MEADFOOT
