The school holidays are well underway – even if summer isn’t – so grab your bucket and spade and visit one of our brilliant bathing waters this month.

There are 34 bathing waters in the North East. All are classed as either an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’, and every one of them has passed high standards for water quality.

The results are based on regular water sampling by specially trained officers from the Environment Agency.

!!n Environment Agency officers visit each bathing water beach from May to September every year to see what levels of bacteria are present in the water. Officers use results to maintain and improve bathing water quality. They were out taking water samples from beaches along the coastline from Blyth to Roker on Monday 14 August.

Mick Donkin, Sampling and Collections Team Leader, said:

Sun or no sun, the beach is a great day out for the kids during the school holidays. Our bathing waters are the cleanest they’ve ever been – not just here but across the country.

Samples are taken regularly throughout the bathing water season and this enables us to check they are safe for people to enjoy. We know how much people like going to the beach and the great benefit this has on the local economy. We will continue our work to ensure these standards are upheld.

Huge strides have been made to improve water quality, helping to make our beaches even more attractive for the increasing numbers of tourists who visit from around the world. Northumbrian Water has invested £1bn over 20 years in enhancing the quality of water on the region’s coastline.

Richard Murray, Head of Wastewater Treatment and Bioresources for Northumbrian Water, said:

Two decades of investment have seen significant improvements to the North East bathing waters and this is something we are extremely proud of. Back in 2000, only four of the region’s beaches met requirements and now all 34 meet the high standards.

We know there is more work to be done, by ourselves and our partners, as great bathing water relies on constant attention to detail. To ensure our beaches are a great place to visit we continually look for new ways of working to help protect and improve our environment.

The public can also do their bit to keep our beaches clean. On Monday 14 August, the Environment Agency and partners launched the #binit4beaches campaign to raise awareness of the importance of only flushing the 3P’s down the toilet: pee, poo and (toilet) paper, and always putting wet wipes in the bin.

While many wet wipes claim to be ‘flushable’, they may not break down quickly once they’ve been flushed. This can add to the risk of blockages. Millions of wipes are wrongly flushed down the toilet each year which means some of them reach our much loved beaches and seas after sewers are overloaded by heavy rain or flooding.

The Marine Conservation Society’s annual beach litter survey shows that the number of wet wipes found on UK beaches have echoed this trend, increasing by 700% over the last decade.

All of the latest information and advice about bathing waters can be found online: https://environment.data.gov.uk/bwq/profiles/

The Environment Agency works 24 hours a day to protect people and wildlife from pollution incidents and we encourage people to report such incidents to our Incident Hotline on 0800 807060.

Emma Howard Boyd met residents of Coverack to see the progress of recovery work 3 weeks after flash flooding hit the Cornish village.

The chair of the Environment Agency spent 2 days in Cornwall, where she also visited a project to boost fish numbers.

On Wednesday 9 August Emma travelled by bike using the Camel trail to Grogley, where she was shown the Water for Growth project – a £2.2 million project to restore freshwater fish habitats to the Camel and Fowey rivers.

The project is a partnership with the Environment Agency, Westcountry Rivers Trust, Natural England and South West Water to remove obstructions to fish migration, making it easier for salmon and trout to spawn in Cornwall. The river restoration project will create an improved environment for people and wildlife while adding value for local businesses that depend on sustainable fisheries. The Camel trail itself is a very popular tourist destination all year round providing an important contribution to the local economy.

During the trip Emma met a staff member inspired to learn to cycle by her visit. Gitty Ankers is an Environment Agency catchment co-ordinator who has worked on the project since its inception in 2015 and was very pleased the chair would be visiting.

But when Gitty learned Emma was a keen cyclist and would be making the trip by bicycle, a cultural barrier from Gitty’s childhood threatened to spoil the visit.

Gitty said:

My parents wanted me out of Iran during the revolution in 1979, so I came over to the UK to do my master’s degree. But in my native country they don’t teach girls two things: swimming and cycling. And those two things have been on my wish list ever since.

When area director Richard Stockdale said Emma Howard Boyd wanted to come and look at Grogley, I was so pleased as I had really worked hard on this project. But when he said it would be part of a cycling trip my heart sank. I thought it would be too difficult to keep up with everyone. So I gave myself a week to learn to cycle.

Borrowing a colleague’s bicycle, bought for his daughter 5 years ago for £5, Gitty began to learn, which is not without its own unique difficulty in hilly Cornwall.

Gitty said:

Learning to cycle is the scariest thing I have ever done. The worst is the speed coming downhill. And finding somewhere flat in Cornwall is challenging. But I found a quiet residential street and every morning I would go up and down that road. Since then I have cycled from Bodmin to Grogley and from Grogley to Wadebridge and back. That’s 7 miles each way.

If I don’t learn to cycle now, then there will be no other opportunities. You always need someone to inspire you to do something, no matter how old you are.

Gitty’s next goal is to learn to swim. Emma and Gitty have committed to swimming together next year so watch this space.

On Thursday 10 August Emma Howard Boyd visited Coverack to see how the village has recovered since flash flooding.

Cornwall Council declared a major incident at 5.40pm on 18 July when flash flooding affected about 50 properties in Coverack. More than 105mm of rainfall fell within 3 hours. The recovery effort saw Environment Agency staff:

• transport 100 tons of silt from a river bed and take it 50m upstream
• remove 50 tons of debris from the beach
• dispose of 40 tons of green waste blocking watercourses
• remove 30 tons of silt, fallen trees and other blockages
• clear blockages from culverts

One of these culverts threatened to flood the home next door. Environment Agency staff cleared the watercourse that flowed within yards of the kitchen window and dug family possessions out of the silt by hand.

A Bournemouth man has been fined £336 for fishing without a licence and failing to state his name and address when asked to do so by the water bailiff.

Lewis Pudwell of Queens Park West Drive, Bournemouth was also ordered to pay £127 costs plus a victim surcharge of £30 following a prosecution by the Environment Agency.

The offence took place on 24 February 2017 at Little Canford Ponds, Wimborne in a place where fishing is regulated for freshwater fish or eels. In addition, contrary to section 35(3) of the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975, Pudwell failed to state his name and address to the water bailiff.

The case was heard by Salisbury magistrates on 20 July. Pudwell pleaded guilty to both offences.

Richard Battersby of the Environment Agency said:

The majority of anglers fish legally. The minority of anglers that fail to buy a fishing licence are cheating their fellow anglers and the future of the sport.

An annual licence costs just £30. Anglers risk significant fines and costs, a criminal conviction and the loss of their fishing equipment for such a small fee that gets used to enhance angling and fisheries habitat improvement works.

Money from fishing licence sales is invested in England’s fisheries and is used to fund a wide range of projects to improve facilities for anglers, including protecting stocks from illegal fishing, pollution and disease; restoring fish stocks through re-stocking; eradicating invasive species; and fish habitat improvements.

Licence money is also used to fund the Angling Trust to provide information about fishing and to encourage participation in the sport.

You need a valid Environment Agency rod licence to fish for salmon, trout, freshwater fish, smelt or eel in England. Buying a rod licence is easy, simply visit www.gov.uk/fishing-licences/buy-a-fishing-licence.

Anyone witnessing illegal fishing incidents in progress can report it directly to the Environment Agency hotline on 0800 80 70 60. Information on illegal fishing and environmental crime can also be reported anonymously to Crime stoppers on 0800 555 111.

Notes to editors:

• Find out more about buying a rod fishing licence: www.gov.uk/fishing-licences/when-you-need-a-licence
• Try fishing! – lots of events for summer 2017 listed at www.getfishing.org.uk.

Environment Agency engineers from across England will descend on two Somerset pumping stations next week (14 to 18 August) for Exercise Ash.

Huish Episcopi Pumping Station and Westover Pumping Station, near Langport, will see pump specialists and incident operatives sharpen their major incident skills in preparation for any serious flood.

High volume pumps – which can fill two average sized bathtubs every second – will be deployed at the stations, increasing water pumping capacity.

Westover Pumping Station removes water through three permanent, electric, submersible pumps at a combined rate of 1,800 litres per second. Huish Episcopi Pumping Station also has three permanent pumps and removes water at combined rate of 5,610 litres per second.

Organiser John Rowlands said:

Somerset has experienced a number of flooding incidents in recent years, most notably in 2013/14 when communities were impacted by flood water. That winter was the wettest for 250 years in parts of the country with only one completely dry day in nearly two months in Somerset.

This unprecedented event led the Environment Agency to consider what else we could do to reduce the impact of a similar flood in the future.

In the summer of 2014, we developed a series of trigger points. When certain criteria is met – more than 100mm of rainfall forecast in 5 days, water levels on the moors rise more than 50mm per hour and a geographical feature (normally a road) is inundated – additional pumping capacity will be deployed at certain locations.

These trigger points were rolled out at a series of community meetings over the autumn and winter of 2014 and Exercise Ash will test this commitment next week.

Severe flooding can also have a detrimental impact on the ecology and agriculture and depending on the time of the flood can take years for the landscape to recover.

As part of the Somerset Levels and Moors 20 Year Flood Action Plan, regular testing of our resilience via training exercises on an annual basis will provide reassurance for communities at flood risk.

The pumps will be loaded onto a lorry at an Environment Agency depot in Bawdrip village a few miles north of the pumping stations on Monday, 14 August. They will reach the pumping stations the same day. It will then take a whole day to unload and deploy them before they are switched on. Different exercise teams will practice attaching the pipes over the course of a week.

John Rowlands said:

Deploying and attaching these pumps takes a significant amount of planning and because these pumps can be used anywhere in the country. We’ve invited engineers from across the Environment Agency to come and put their incident skills into practice.

This, alongside the work of our partners, will make a huge difference in reducing the frequency, duration and severity of flooding in the future.

Partner organisations have been invited to attend Exercise Ash as observers, including Avon and Somerset Local Resilience Forum, Somerset County Council, Internal Drainage Board and the Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service.

It is important that everybody is aware of their own flood risk. People can find out how to get ready and check their flood risk at https://www.gov.uk/prepare-for-flooding or by calling Floodline on 0345 988 1188.

Notes for Editors:

There are 21 permanent pumping sites in Somerset. Pumping stations are set to operate automatically according to water levels in the rhynes draining the moor or flood alleviation schemes. These pumps cannot operate if the receiving river is full, when spillways are operating or river banks are overflowing. This is why trigger points are in place, which alert the Environment Agency to start deploying mobile pumps. Triggers include specific roads starting to flood, the forecast of heavy rain, and moor water levels rising above 50mm/hour.

Huish Episcopi Pumping Station and Westover Pumping Station were built in the 1960 as part of a suite of works around Langport. Another two pumping stations were built at the same time – Long Load Pumping Station and Midelney Pumping Station. They are all located next to rivers – Huish Episcopi and Long Load on the River Yeo, Midelney on the River Isle and Westover on the River Parrett. They pump water from the adjacent moors (38 million cubic metres of water when the moors are full) which form part of the entire 160,000 acre Somerset Levels and Moors.

The 20 Year Flood Action Plan was jointly created by a broad range of local and national organisations and communities, and is overseen by the Somerset Rivers Authority.

South West Water Ltd has been ordered to pay more than £142,000 in fines and costs for discharging poor quality effluent from two of its sewage treatment plants. The prosecutions were brought by the Environment Agency.

The offences were committed in Denbury, Devon and Praze an Beeble near Camborne, Cornwall where the company breached permit conditions by allowing inadequately treated effluent to enter nearby watercourses.

Strict limits are set on effluent discharged from sewage treatment works to ensure they don’t adversely affect receiving watercourses. It is the responsibility of the site operator to ensure a treatment works operates in accordance with its permit. They must carry out regular maintenance and repairs.

At Denbury, treated effluent is discharged into the Halwell Stream. Between September 2015 and June 2016, four samples tested for ammonia, suspended solids and Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) exceeded the quality standards laid down in the site’s permit. The treatment works is only permitted two exceedances in any 12 months so the additional discharges made in March and June 2016 were offences.

The court was told the filter bed rotating arms at the site failed to operate effectively over a number of months. This coincided with a time when the site was not visited every day and alarms were not working reliably.

The sewage treatment works at Praze an Beeble requires a lot of maintenance and is permitted to discharge only a very limited amount of ammonia. Every month South West Water must take a sample of the discharge and notify the Environment Agency of the result.

In May and August 2016 the amount of ammonia discharged exceeded the amount allowed by the permit.

When further inquiries were made by the Environment Agency, it transpired that the site’s online ammonia monitor had recorded that too much ammonia had been discharged from the treatment works for some 15 days in April 2016 as well.

In May, part of the site was not being cleaned often enough and equipment needed repairing. In August, part of the site had been blocked by moss, blanket weed and sludge. South West Water said the monitoring equipment had not always worked accurately in April.

Mark Pilcher of the Environment Agency said:

Water companies must ensure effluent is treated to a sufficiently high standard to protect the environment. Regular maintenance of sewage treatment works helps with the early detection of faults and allows repairs to be made in good time before treatment deteriorates to the point where a site breaches its permit.

Appearing before a district judge at Bodmin Magistrates’ Court, South West Water Ltd was ordered to pay a total of £142,524. The company had earlier pleaded guilty to three charges (two for Denbury and one for Praze an Beeble) of breaching Regulation 38(2) of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010.

The fine for Denbury was £80,000 with £4,993 costs plus a £120 victim surcharge. The fine for Praze an Beeble was £53,334 with £3,957 costs plus a £120 victim surcharge. The case was heard on 3 August, 2017.