‘I’ve never seen it that bad’ - Lee-on-the-Solent resident raises fears over water quality in Lee beach amid 137-hour storm release

Elaine Johnson has lived in Lee-on-the-Solent since 1987 and walks along Lee beach regularly.

She said: ‘I’ve never seen it that bad in all the years I've lived here.

‘The way I would describe it is probably a bad latte - it was very murky, there was froth and it smelled very bad as well.

‘So often when we’ve been down there the water has been absolutely gorgeous.

‘We used to have stuff washed up on the beach but I've never seen water quality like that in living memory and I'm down there most days.

‘I went online and sent Southern Water a message through their website and I haven’t heard anything from them.

‘I’m not happy - we’re paying a lot of money for our water, they’re making vast profits, as are a lot of these companies, which is going to shareholders and the investment is not being put into the infrastructure.

‘At the moment the regulations are that they are allowed to discharge a certain amount which is wrong so we need to change the law and we also need money not being pumped into, excuse the pun, the shareholders.

‘We need investment that will improve the situation, people could get hepatitis - these private companies need to be more accountable.’

SEE ALSO: Lee-on-the-Solent mum marks 200 days of braving the waves for Gosport teenager Elin Martin who died after being hit by a bus in Portsmouth

Gosport Borough Councillor John Gledhill, member for Lee-West said: ‘It’s a Southern Water issue, there’s nothing the local council can do.

‘If you look at the Environment Agency website, our water quality in Lee and certainly around the area is really good.’

‘Across the country discharges are appalling, I think in our area it’s not as bad, if you look at the data generally it’s pretty good.’

The environment agency website has classified Lee-on-the-Solent as having ‘excellent’ water quality with three-star ratings going back to 2017.

Sarah Shreeve from Stop the Sewage Southsea added: 'Sewage dumping in the sea can also cause big algae blooms as the algae like to feed off the nutrients in the sewage.

'It's difficult to tell without testing if the substance in the picture is sewage or algae but given the amount of sewage that has been dumped over the past couple of weeks, it seems very likely that this pollution (be it algae or actual sewage) is the result of continued sewage discharges along the coast by Southern Water.'