In this area there are 94km of rivers and streams as well as a coastline which includes 11 designated bathing waters and 3 designated shellfish waters.
Storm overflows act like safety valves on the wastewater network. When the system becomes too full (for example, after heavy rain), storm overflows release the excess. If they didn’t work, sewage would build up in pipes and flood into people’s gardens and homes.
We want to reduce the need for storm overflows to operate, which is why we’re investing record amounts into improving, expanding and upgrading our network to better cope with the volumes of wastewater it deals with.
We are reducing our reliance on storm overflows by:
Our monitoring teams constantly review data being sent back to us from our EDMs, sewer level monitors, river water quality monitors, flow and pressure monitors and water samples. This constant data-gathering is fundamental to modelling our system and identifying areas for improvement.
For this catchment, this means:
Slowing the flow of water through the environment
Our teams are doing an incredible job up on Exmoor National Park, restoring the natural peatland. This allows the land to hold water, so less runs off into the rivers (which has a negative impact on water quality). Looked after properly, peat also extracts huge amounts of carbon from the air which improves the environment in other ways.
We use the Environment Agency’s measures of river health to assess our impact on rivers. Ecological status of our rivers are at a national low (just 14% of rivers achieved Good in 2022).
Currently, in our area, 12% of Reasons for Not Achieving Good Ecological Status (RNAGs) are associated with our activity. We estimate that our investments into our storm overflows will reduce this to c.9% by 2025, and we aim to make further investment to reduce this to 0% by 2050.
There are a lot of other factors that impact the quality of river and coastal waters. The pie chart below shows what they were in 2023, and the percentage of RNAGs they caused.
We work in partnership with others to improve water quality across our region and to help clean up the rivers in the South West.
Slowing the flow of water through the environment
With the help of Devon Wildlife Trust, we supported work with the National Trust on the Arlington Estate and surrounding farmland. Together, we constructed over 30 leaky dams and other natural flood management measures on one of the in-house farms, using timber sourced from surrounding woodland. This slows the flow of water through the environment, and helps prevent flooding and can reduce the amount of run-off discolouring and polluting the rivers.
Areas North Devon welcome up to 111.5% more people in the summer. This means it’s a hotspot for hotels, restaurants, and cafes. If you own a catering or food-related business, we’ve got some useful information just for you about using our sewers in the right way.
Looking after our treatment works is a job John and Clive take very seriously. Both live in a beautiful area of North Devon and are passionate about their job and protecting the environment.
“Seeing the amount of wipes, non-flushable tissues, and sanitary products that come into our treatment works is really disheartening for us,” says Clive, “even more disheartening if these items block the sewers and cause a pollution that harms the environment.”
“Just flushing the 3Ps (Pee, Poo and Paper) would really help the treatment works run at their best, and protect the environment,” says John.