WATCH: Southern Water comes clean over “unfortunate” spill of sanitary towels, faeces and plastics into Langstone Harbour

The incident on September 17 at Budds Farm, Havant, shows sanitary towels, rag, faeces and plastics entering the harbour during a storm discharge. Up to 10 days after the incident debris from the spill was recorded washed up on the shoreline.

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The Environment Agency is investigating Southern Water, which has admitted the incident “should not have happened” before action was taken to remove dirty items washed up.

A local resident, who wishes to stay anonymous, said: “Visible solids indicate that a whole host of chemicals are flowing from the sewage works into our environment. Our concern is the cocktail of chemicals that can’t be seen and how they are impacting the environment.

“We know that high levels of bacteria are present, together with pharmaceuticals, recreational drugs and hydrocarbons from road run-off. There’s a very large unmanaged experiment going on in our harbour and the environment at large.”

The source said the large size of the pipe (1.5m diameter) suggested a flow rate of “many thousands of litres per minute” which included “thousands of solids entering the harbour...an environmentally protected area”.

A spokesman for the Environment Agency said: “We can confirm there was a storm discharge at Budds Farm on the 17 September. Southern Water and a number of members of the public alerted us to the incident. We are investigating, but whilst our investigations are ongoing, we are unable to comment further in order not to prejudice our regulatory inquiries.

“We send our thanks to the members of the public who called our incident hotline on 0800 807060 and encourage anyone to call us if they suspect a pollution incident.”

A Southern Water statement said in response: “September saw very heavy rain – 67mm in the Havant area alone – which increased surface and ground water levels, leading to our sewers and Budds Farm Wastewater Treatment Works reaching capacity. To prevent flooding of communities, we are permitted by the Environment Agency to release this storm water.

“On September 17, there were eight separated storm overflow releases local to Budds Farm, totalling 1,772 minutes in duration. Unfortunately, one of these events, lasting 33 minutes, should not have happened but was caused by a technical failure involving a debris screen.

“We reported all details to the Environment Agency and published it to our website. We conducted beach walks to remove any plastic or other material which washed through.”

It comes as Southern Water was reported to have illegally discharged sewage for hundreds of hours in the past year, according to a new investigation published last month.

Water companies are only supposed to spill after heavy rain to prevent the system from backing up and flooding homes and businesses with raw sewage.

But an investigation by the BBC, which looked at data from Wessex, Thames and Southern Water, suggested these companies were discharging sewage on some of the hottest and driest days of 2022.

The BBC investigation reports that Southern, Thames and Wessex illegally started releasing sewage on dry days 388 times last year. This includes 19 July 2022, the hottest day on record, when temperatures topped 40C in some places with many people cooling off in bathing waters.