Crowds of protestors made up of surfers, cold water swimmers, kayakers, paddle boarders, coasteering companies, divers, lifeguards, and regular beach-going families took to a Pembrokeshire beach on a sunny weekend this month, with the message of ‘enough is enough, cut the crap!’
As part of the national ‘Surfers Against Sewage’ Paddle Out Protests, campaigners took to the sea at Broad Haven beach on Saturday, May 18 demonstrating to the Government, along with water companies such as Dŵr Cymru, and regulators like Natural Resources Wales the will to stand up for people’s rights to clean water, and that those rightly concerned will not stop until there’s an end to sewage pollution.
Broad Haven Buccaneers surf lifesaving club who were a part of the protests, along with local Blue Tit Chill Swimmers, revealed that the group were forced to cancel four beach lifesaving training days last summer due to sewage pollution.
Also on hand to address the crowds was Pembrokeshire mother Jayne Etherington who offered a stark warning after her daughter Caitlin became seriously ill after becoming infected with e-coli following a swim in the sea at Amroth one August morning, at the height of summer!
With such pollution threatening people’s health, Jayne told the crowd of campiagners: “This is about life and death! It’s about time something changed.”
At the start of the week, the Wales Coast Award winners for 2024 were announced, spotlighting coastal sites achieving supposed ‘high standards’ required to receive what is meant to be a ‘prestigious’ Blue Flag.
Preseli Pembrokeshire was polluted by sewage 7,659 times in 2023, lasting 91,401 hours - that's 10.58 years!
Monitoring was disabled in some locations, so even more sewage could have found its way into our waters last year.
Kate Evans of Planet CIC - one of the organisers of the protest, said: “The event was great - we were really pleased with the turn out.”
Surfers Against Sewage has also created the ‘End Sewage Pollution Manifesto’ which has five very clear, key solutions to end sewage pollution and will be pushing the next Government to adopt their demands and give them their full backing.
Pic: Peter Bounds
Video: Planet CIC
As part of the national ‘Surfers Against Sewage’ Paddle Out Protests, campaigners took to the sea at Broad Haven beach on Saturday, May 18 demonstrating to the Government, along with water companies such as Dŵr Cymru, and regulators like Natural Resources Wales the will to stand up for people’s rights to clean water, and that those rightly concerned will not stop until there’s an end to sewage pollution.
Broad Haven Buccaneers surf lifesaving club who were a part of the protests, along with local Blue Tit Chill Swimmers, revealed that the group were forced to cancel four beach lifesaving training days last summer due to sewage pollution.
Also on hand to address the crowds was Pembrokeshire mother Jayne Etherington who offered a stark warning after her daughter Caitlin became seriously ill after becoming infected with e-coli following a swim in the sea at Amroth one August morning, at the height of summer!
With such pollution threatening people’s health, Jayne told the crowd of campiagners: “This is about life and death! It’s about time something changed.”
At the start of the week, the Wales Coast Award winners for 2024 were announced, spotlighting coastal sites achieving supposed ‘high standards’ required to receive what is meant to be a ‘prestigious’ Blue Flag.
Preseli Pembrokeshire was polluted by sewage 7,659 times in 2023, lasting 91,401 hours - that's 10.58 years!
Monitoring was disabled in some locations, so even more sewage could have found its way into our waters last year.
Kate Evans of Planet CIC - one of the organisers of the protest, said: “The event was great - we were really pleased with the turn out.”
Surfers Against Sewage has also created the ‘End Sewage Pollution Manifesto’ which has five very clear, key solutions to end sewage pollution and will be pushing the next Government to adopt their demands and give them their full backing.
Pic: Peter Bounds
Video: Planet CIC
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NewsTranscript
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00:59 >> To support this paddle out that's been organized by the local community to
01:04 coincide with the National Surfers Against Sewage Paddle Out event,
01:10 to protest about the state of our waters and
01:13 our beaches due to sewage pollution in particular.
01:17 Most of these changes are hard to perceive.
01:21 We have Swanswell Brook right here,
01:25 where there have been hundreds of hours of sewage dumped into the stream just last year.
01:31 And that's just when it's been monitored, as I was saying earlier.
01:34 So you'll see right there now, children playing in the stream,
01:38 potentially exposing themselves to dangerous levels of E.
01:43 coli and whatever else is in the sewage that's being put in there.
01:48 There are still some fish.
01:51 Eels still miraculously come back here every year,
01:55 although they're an endangered species now.
01:57 They're sort of clinging on by their fingernails due to the decline in water
02:01 quality, largely due to livestock agricultural runoff, but also to sewage.
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02:11 We need to be constantly getting the word out.
02:13 We need to engage our community council, the county council.
02:17 We need to lobby to make sure that they're aware that the community is
02:21 concerned about this.
02:21 I think this event today was a wonderful indicator of the level of concern.
02:26 And I think this is not going to be an annual event, but
02:30 this is gonna be a weekly event within the next period of time,
02:35 unless changes are made in terms of political pressure on developers,
02:42 proper resourcing for the regulators to make sure that they're able to monitor and
02:49 to enforce compliance.
02:51 And when sanctions are made on companies, then it's not just a token slap of
02:56 the wrist which gets taken then as part of the cost of doing business.
03:00 But it's actually something that is gonna cause a change in behavior and
03:04 the proper investment.
03:06 I think in the case of Welch Water, it's slightly different to the situation in
03:10 the rest of the UK, where the water companies are owned by foreign pension
03:15 funds and people who have no interest in ensuring compliance,
03:20 if they can get away with it.
03:22 Here we have a company that's a not-for-profit, Welch Water,
03:26 Dord Cymru, and it's a question of the Welch government and
03:29 that the regulator NRW be adequately resourced to make sure that this pollution
03:33 that we're experiencing, not just here in Broadhaven, but across Wales, is stopped.
03:38 (upbeat music)