A stain on Britain: Sewage contaminates its waterways and seas

Beneath the gloomy seas off southern England, 400 million mussels encrust ropes hanging from buoys dotted over an area the size of the country’s biggest airport.

Almost 5 kilometers from shore at its nearest point, Europe’s largest offshore mussel farm was built by the Holmyard family in Lyme Bay, where they believed it would be free of the millions of gallons of sewage pumped into U.K. waters each year.

But even this far offshore, harmful bacteria such as E.coli can pollute the water, blocking exports to continental Europe for weeks and damaging the prospects of a business producing sustainable food.

“It’s criminal that they’re allowed to dump what they dump in the seas and get away with it,” sales manager Sarah Holmyard said during a visit to the farm. “It’s affecting all sorts of businesses, including us.”

While Britain’s shellfish industry is small, the problems faced by the Holmyards underscore how failings with the most basic services in British society such as water and sewage can harm the broader economy.

Interviews with 20 people and data analysis show how polluted water has also hit tourism and delayed construction projects, acting as a drag on the economy at a time when the new Labour government is trying to kick-start growth.

In the five years to October 2024, the Environment Agency intervened on 60 occasions to object to planning applications due to the pressures they would place on local sewerage systems, according to a Freedom of Information request.

Clean water campaigners have started to marshal opposition against planning applications, believing that’s more likely to pressure the government into fixing the sewage system than current efforts focusing on the harm caused to biodiversity.

“Money talks,” said Ash Smith at campaign group Windrush Against Sewage Pollution. Standing knee deep in gray, untreated sewage water in a local brook in Oxfordshire, he explained how they were objecting to house building to show how the water system had broken the country’s infrastructure more broadly.

The pumping of sewage into rivers and seas has become a major scandal in Britain. Privatized water companies have been accused of prioritizing dividends over investment and dumping sewage in waterways when its ailing infrastructure cannot cope.

The pollution has deterred wild water swimmers, angered surfers, prompted warnings about toxic blue-green algal blooms in lakes and created an army of people who have become experts on water quality after they noticed changes in waterways.

In England, water companies discharged sewage for 3.6 million hours in 2023, polluting streams, rivers and coastlines, littering them with sanitary products and condoms, damaging ecosystems and habitats, and scaring away tourists.

Sewage spills

British sewers mostly combine rainwater with wastewater. During exceptional rainfalls, water companies can make “spills” into waterways to prevent sewers from becoming overwhelmed. But many have been fined for releasing sewage too regularly.

South West Water, which provides water and sewerage services in the county of Devon by the Holmyard’s farm, discharged sewage for 530,737 hours in 2023 — an 83% jump on 2022 making it one of the worst performers in England, Environment Agency data show.

South West Water said it was looking for ways to improve water quality at Lyme Bay.

“We are making sure that every designated shellfish water in the region will meet the government’s target of less than 10 spills per year — 10 years ahead of deadline — as we plan to nearly double investment to £2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) 2025-30.”

When John Holmyard and his wife Nicki started to plan their mussel farm, they had a lot to factor in.

Having farmed mussels in colder waters off Scotland for years, they decided to find a site with warmer water, the right sea depth and abundance of nutrients they believed would help mussels grow faster. It had to be far enough offshore to avoid runoff, but with some protection to limit the swell of the sea.

They settled on Lyme Bay after visiting similar sites around Britain, Europe, China and New Zealand and spent seven years securing planning and regulatory approval — without knowing whether their hunch would pay off.

Eleven years on, the farm produces about 3,000 metric tons of mussels a year and the Holmyards hope to hit 10,000 to 12,000 metric tons once it is completed.

John Holmyard, who runs the business with Nicki, their daughter Sarah and son George, said they never expected sewage to affect their farm: “But it’s not worked out like that.”

For shellfish producers, dumped sewage has been toxic.

Before Britain left the European Union, mussels and oysters could be shipped to the continent prior to purification. Post Brexit, the EU only accepts purified goods or those from the cleanest British waters, rated Class A.

That change has all but destroyed mussel farming in north Wales on Britain’s west coast. The region once produced the bulk of Britain’s exports to Europe but now rarely sells to the continent due to poor water and a lack of bulk purification facilities in the country.

The Shellfish Association of Great Britain (SAGB) says British exports would double if the seas were cleaner.

James Green, who harvests and sells oysters in Whitstable, a town in southeast England famed for shellfish since Roman times, used to send about half of his produce to markets such as Hong Kong and Europe, but Brexit and water quality issues mean he now only sells purified oysters domestically.

His water supplier, Southern Water, was fined £90 million in 2021 for dumping sewage in the five years to 2015, disrupting harvests and exports. He did not get any compensation and says it is hard to wait for improvements.

“I’ve got a business,” he said. “Can you wait for the changes to kick in, in five, six, seven years’ time?”

To protect his oysters, Green monitors for E.coli, salmonella and Norovirus, and tracks rainfall and sewer overflows to assess risks before harvesting.

Southern Water said it was investing heavily to ensure the continued high quality of shellfish beds around its coast.

“The 2021 court case regarding events between 2010 and 2015 found no evidence of impact on shellfish beds, which are affected by many factors,” it said.

Driven to despair

The Holmyards say their mussels are tested for E.coli in the Netherlands on an almost daily basis — and they have always been within the limits for a Class A designation.

But high numbers of E.coli have occasionally been reported by British authorities in similar monthly tests, designating parts of the farm Class B.

In the British system, negative readings can have different outcomes for future harvests. For the Holmyards, it stopped them from exporting mussels for several weeks from that part of the farm — and also designated the same area as Class B the same time the following year.

The family say they find it baffling, as bacteria coming from the shore should be heavily diluted by the time they reach the farm — and because the British readings don’t tally with the more frequent Dutch tests.

John said they had been unable to raise fresh capital since Brexit due to the risk of export bans.

The British body responsible for classifying shellfish harvesting areas, the Food Standards Agency, said it had tried to be flexible, but it had to protect public health and classifications would only improve with better water.

As Sarah and George plucked predatory starfish off the mussels, they explained how an annual survey showed the farm had spawned an abundance of species, such as crab and lobster.

Their blue mussels, known for their rich, sweet flavor, are sold as a premium product in Europe. Notwithstanding the bans, the Holmyards still export about 95% of their mussels to the European Union, with the rest sold in Britain.

Tourism bosses say this is the kind of high-quality, locally produced food they need to promote to prospective holidaymakers.

Alistair Handyside, chairman of the South West Tourism Alliance, said while tourism was mainly affected by weather and cost, talk of sewage had damaged the appeal of many locations.

“It drives you to despair,” he said.

Toxic output

The sight of sewage and litter on beaches and in rivers has also driven thousands of people to protest.

Sally Burtt-Jones was one of the founders of SOS Whitstable, part of a network of groups that stage protests, test local water and campaign for legislative change.

She said she was most proud of her campaigning work. “We care about the community and the sea,” she said. “When we get together we can make change happen.”

John Reeve, a Surfers Against Sewage representative in the northeastern seaside town of Saltburn, has worked with local officials and studied the geology to understand how to control rainwater as storms become heavier due to climate change.

“We are making a difference over time,” he said.

The water industry says it has invested heavily in infrastructure since privatization in 1989, but population growth and climate change have imposed new pressures at a time when it says successive governments — and regulator Ofwat — were focused on keeping customer’s bills low.

Ofwat said water companies in England and Wales had paid out £53 billion pounds in dividends since privatization — and had collective net debt of £69.5 billion in 2024.

It has proposed letting customer bills rise by an average of 36% before inflation over the next five years to fund infrastructure upgrades and has gained new powers to link dividends to performance. The government is also reviewing the sector.

An Ofwat spokesperson said customers wanted change: “We need to see a transformation in companies’ culture and performance. We will monitor and hold companies to account.”

Failures around sewage have also bedeviled construction, with the Environment Agency objecting to planning applications when it thinks existing systems will not cope.

The objections, for everything from housing to retail sites, offices, schools, a science business park and leisure center, are typically overcome with ways to mitigate the impact.

But the objections add time, cost and complexity to building projects, a serious challenge for the government as it seeks to trigger a boom in housing and infrastructure construction.

Water pollution has also damaged biodiversity.

Stocks of Atlantic salmon, which hatch in freshwater breeding grounds in Britain, have hit new lows.

The Environment Agency attributed the fall to pollution and sedimentation — just the type of environment the Holmyards had sought to avoid.

Sarah said the potential for the business being replicated elsewhere was huge. “But if you’ve got the same issues of not being able to export because of the water quality, then it’s just not going to work.”