See the following file for a Powerpoint slide presentation:- SWW-Bigbury-PC-

In a necessarily rather hurried talk prior to PC business, the SWW representative (Ms Vicky Garner) explained the way that our sewage is processed in an interesting sequence of slides and was keen to emphasise that the Environment Agency recently has declared the seawater off most of our local beaches to be of an excellent standard for bathing purposes. However, she was vague under questioning and seemed unaware of the close proximity of the Bigbury-on-Sea sewage treatment work’s discharge point to our local, holiday beaches. The appearance of two sewage clouds in Challaborough Bay during the summer around this exit point was unexplained although blockage of the exit and a break in the pipe under Warren Point had been extensively investigated by divers and SWW engineers earlier in the season – as recounted on this website. Similarly, the continuing use of bulk tankers to transport ‘excess’ sewage away from BoS STW was unexplained. One obvious conclusion is that the discharge from BoS STW should be subjected to tertiary treatment with UV irradiation to render it harmless to human health before release into the environment, as is the discharge into the Avon Estuary from Aveton Gifford STW. The PC will contact SWW and the Environment Agency to make this point. Another conclusion is that the hydraulic capacity of the BoS STW is insufficient for the task, especially in the crowded holiday season.