Sussex protestors take part in national day of action against sewage

The conservation charity is today (May 18) hosting a paddle-out protest, encouraging people who love, live by and use the sea to grab their surfboards and paddle out into the waves for a protest.

With a general election on the horizon, organisers are hoping to galvanise voters into action, urging those in power to hold water companies to account and draft legislation which will make sewage dumping more difficult.

A statement on the Surfers Against Sewage website makes unambiguously clear who the targets of today’s protests are: “Our ocean is under threat. Water companies are forcing our rivers and seas into a critical state by continuing to dump a toxic chemical cocktail of untreated sewage straight into waterways. And for far too long, regulators and Governments have let them get away with it. Not only are they destroying ecosystems, they are putting human health at risk. And we’re sick of it.”

As well as the physical protests themselves, Surfers Against Sewage is also writing to Ofwat – the national water regulation board – to take note of the protests, and push water companies to ‘clean up their mess.’

The protests also come as water companies across the UK submit draft investment plans for the next five years, all of which will be reviewed and approved by Ofwat.

Surfers Against Sewage lead protestor for Worthing Colin McHale, said the Sussex protest set a positive precedent for the movement going forward: “”It was great; there were families there, older people, younger people, all of us in the sea to take a stand. These people still want to use the sea, but they’ve been getting sick from going in and yet they’re still going in to make their voices heard, to protest and say ‘I want this water cleaned up’, and I think that’s brave.

"In Worthing we’re all linked to the sea. Every body uses it. The beachfront, whether that’s the promenade, the sea itself or the beach, everybody uses it; it’s a public amenity that’s free and people are worried by and fed up the pollution that’s going into it. We pay water companies a lot of money to take away our sewage and we’re fed up of it just going back into the sea.”