We get that customers and communities want to see action

Earlier this year, we were all devastated to see first-hand the impact on customers and communities when our sewers burst. Hundreds of South West Water colleagues worked around the clock to make a temporary fix to protect the environment, whilst we agreed a lasting solution.

We’ve already replaced the burst upper section of Maer Road, and work will start on phase one of the permanent solution next week. We are doing this in two phases so we can remove the temporary fix safely, and given we will be carrying out most of the work in the wetter months and close to the watercourse.

Whilst the sewer burst was unforeseen, customers and communities rightly want assurances, questioning whether we are investing enough today to take into account climate change and population growth, as well as reducing the number of spills from our assets to protect and improve water quality.

Wastewater treatment has changed dramatically over the years

Whilst we are focused on the here and now, and the future, we can look back for context and reassurance that we can, and will, fix what’s gone before and what we see today. Thirty years ago, two-thirds of our sewage in the South West did go directly untreated into rivers and the sea. In a journey starting in the 1990s with Clean Sweep, and a £13bn investment, we created a legacy in wastewater services, and a first for the South West.

For Exmouth, things have changed dramatically, ensuring that water quality has consistently been the best it has ever been – with the Environment Agency rating the waters as Excellent over the past four years.

For most of the 19th Century, Exmouth’s sewage was discharged from an outfall at Imperial Road and into the Duckpond. In the 1890s storage tanks and a pumping station were built at Sheppard’s Row to pump sewage into the Duckpond to avoid flooding. As the population of Exmouth grew and spread in the 1950s, major sewers were constructed, including an outfall at Maer Rocks. Most of the town’s sewage was then diverted to this new outfall.

As housing in The Colonies increased in the late 1960s, new storage tanks and a pumping station were built on Hartopp Road to connect to the area’s sewers and pump flows to an outfall at Kings Lake. It wasn’t until the early 1970s that any form of basic sewage treatment occurred. An outfall was tunnelled through the hill to discharge flows at Straight Point, away from Exmouth beach. Sewage from Sandy Bay was also given basic treatment at Maer Lane Treatment Works.

By 1998 all of Exmouth’s wastewater flows were being treated before discharging, with a new pumping station at Phear Park taking flows from Lympstone, and improvements to the Hartopp Road pumping station. New storage tanks were built at Imperial Road and the car park at Maer Road to handle storm flows.

We continue to invest in Exmouth’s long-term future

We are continuing to invest in Exmouth, working closely with the Environment Agency.

Firstly, work is ongoing to protect the Exe Estuary Shellfish waters, as without investment the waters could deteriorate. In the five-year period to 2025, our original plan was to invest in storm tanks to hold the increased flows. Our investigations, however, demonstrated that the proposed solutions would not be as resilient as needed to reduce spill levels in the longer term.

Given this, we have embarked on a series of improvements, bringing forward investment, much earlier than would normally occur in the planning cycle, to give customers and communities a more enduring solution. We are spending double what had originally been estimated.

With around £25m of investment, our work has been to increase flows pumped up to Maer Lane Treatment Works to reduce overflow discharges at Phear Park and Maer Road. Much of this work has already been completed. We have upgraded Phear Park, removed groundwater that was entering the system, removed rain runoff from the sewers in Seymour Avenue, Featherbed Lane and Denning Court, and constructed a new larger outfall at Straight Point. The final work to the outfall is due to be completed by March 2025.

Secondly, we have also agreed plans to improve effluent quality and reduce storm discharges at Maer Lane to improve the newly designated Sandy Bay Shellfish area. This will double the capacity of Maer Lane Treatment Works and we are targeting completion by March 2028.

And finally, we will continue to reduce the use of overflows in Exmouth, which will likely involve removing surface water flows from our sewers to relieve pressure on our network.

Our investment over the next five years is estimated to be around £38m. To keep customers and communities informed, we will be setting up a drop-in centre in the town to share progress and answer questions.

Many of our teams live in and around Exmouth. The South West is our home, as well as where we work, and we are all working hard to deliver the changes we all want to see.