There's been a lot of concern over the past week or so about the state of our coastal waters. Recent heavy rain, falling on ground hardened by weeks of drought, overwhelmed some sewage systems in the country. Under an arrangement permitted by the regulator, water companies released untreated sewage straight into rivers and the sea. This step prevents the unpleasant flooding that would otherwise occur in homes, hospitals, offices and along roads. The Environment Agency issued warnings about water quality to sea bathers all along the south coast.
The centre of Eastbourne's sewage infrastructure is the fort-like works at Langney Point. This is where Southern Water treats the sewage from the town and the settlements around. It then pumps it out to sea through a long outflow pipe.
Further west, by the Wish Tower, is the Granville Road Storm Overflow. This discharges raw sewage directly on to the beach at times of heavy rain. I think there's another one at Langney doing the same thing (probably more often).
I've been trying to educate myself on how this all works and how we've got to this point. I've found a paper to help me put it all in context. It's titled "Were Health Resorts Bad for your Health? Coastal Pollution Control Policy in England 1945-76", and was published in the Environment and History Journal in February 1999. The author is John Hassan, a historian at Manchester Metropolitan University who specialised in water.
The article traces the beginning of the systematic practice of sewage discharge into seas and rivers back to the industrial revolution. Coastal towns, as their resident and visitor populations grew, abandoned their old practice of depositing effluent in dug-out cesspools. Instead, they built short drains through which they directed sewage straight into the sea. The common view was that the sea's salt and mass would disperse and dilute the waste.
All this sat uneasily with these towns' main selling point for visitors - their offer of an invigorating, healthy natural environment. It soon became apparent that the sea was not as clean as it might be: unpleasant items were visible; an occasional stench blew in with the tide.
Local government, however, was reluctant to take action. Resident ratepayers objected to costly schemes whose main beneficiaries were the visiting tourists; or neighbouring councils who themselves may have done nothing to address their own polluting.
So authorities confined themselves to carefully positioned outfall pipes at or beyond the low tide water mark, from which their town's untreated sewage was debouched. Here in Eastbourne, such an outflow was placed off the then remote Crumbles shingle bank (where it is today of course, although the surroundings are now built up).
As time went on, concerns grew, and in particular fears of disease from bathing in these filthy waters. Inshore fisheries became contaminated, with poisoned shellfish causing death or serious illness. Outbreaks of Cholera and Typhoid occurred. But official medical opinion remained sceptical. A direct link between sea bathing and serious disease could not be established. These illnesses equally affected those who had been nowhere near the sea.
After the second World War, coastal pollution began to attract more attention. Official surveys of our tidal waters indicated deterioration. At the same time, seaside holidays were becoming ever more popular. Rising living standards and the advent of holidays with pay reinforced the trend. Development of coastal resorts intensified, but investment in infrastructure to address increased pollution failed to take place. Further concern was expressed about health risks, in particular the fear that sea bathing might be behind the Polio outbreak in children.
The authorities for their part saw pollution controls as too costly. The country could not afford higher environmental standards while there were more pressing demands on public funds. The official position acknowledged that some beaches were aesthetically revolting. But there was no evidence swimming off them caused serious harm to health. Then occurrence of such illnesses as Cholera and Typhoid began to reduce. This was actually down to wider, unconnected public health improvements, for example the Polio vaccine. It masked the absence of any effort to clean up our bathing waters.
The 1960s saw the emergence of the Coastal Anti-Pollution League, a pressure group founded by a husband and wife whose daughter had died of Polio after swimming in the sea. In addition to its conventional campaign, it published an annual list of clean beaches - damning those omitted. Whatever the league and its founders actually felt about the evidence for health risks, they focussed instead on aesthetic and amenity considerations. Support grew. A degree of pragmatism was involved - the campaign acknowledged that raw sewage pumped a mile or so out at sea might present less health risk than fully treated sewage debouched closer to the beach. Official resistance began to soften.
This trend was mirrored in mainland Europe. Fledgling European institutions placed environmental considerations at the top of their priorities. The way was clear for the UK to implement the European Bathing Water Directive of 1976. Campaigners and pressure groups now had a potent legal basis on which to take action against polluters.
This is where my paper's study ends. There's no doubt more to consider as the water industry built new treatment works, and the EU published further directives. The privatisation of water and sewerage was significant. Brexit will provide a new chapter in the story, now or in due course.
For us and our investigation to understand better our town, the analysis gives us a couple of things to ponder:
- the speed of development and population growth in coastal towns, and the struggle to build infrastructure to keep up with it;
- the tension between resident taxpayers, and the interests of visitors and those whose livelihood depended on them.
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