33 days of sewage flowing into a Sheffield river

Good afternoon members — and welcome to Thursday’s Tribune.

That the former lead singer of The Undertones is now our leading voice against river pollution will never cease to amaze me. But this seems to be the timeline we live in. A few years ago I’d never even heard of a combined sewer overflow (CSO) — and yet now it seems like the media talks about little else. Ever since the water companies began publishing data on how often they discharge raw sewage into our rivers, the issue has become a hot political potato. Earlier this week I went out to the River Rivelin armed only with Google Maps and some data to find out how big the problem is in Sheffield and what is being done about it.

Can you help? We’re still looking for a few more people, preferably women, who can help us out with our story about people relocating from Sheffield to London. If you fit the bill, please get in touch with me on editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk.

Editor’s note: I love all our readers, obviously. However, I love those who pay for The Tribune just that little bit more than all the others. Those are the people who pay for my running shoes, my pints of craft beer, my car’s MOT and my Spotify subscription. If you are able, and want to ensure the long-term future of high-quality journalism in Sheffield, please become a member today. Thank you.

Mini-briefing

🔥 As many of you will have seen, the hills above Sheffield were ablaze on Tuesday night as a huge fire ripped through Burbage Moor. Our regular contributor David Bocking was the first reporter on the scene at Ox Stones on Wednesday morning and filed a story to his personal newsletter later the same day. The dry heather and tonnes of peat fuel up there means fire is always going to be a risk. But carelessly thrown away disposable barbecues aren’t helping.

🗳️ South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard’s term of office could be cut by two years if plans to give him the powers currently exercised by Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Billings are accepted by the government. In other combined authorities the PCC role is performed by the mayor but in South Yorkshire the roles are split. If the government accept the changes, Mr Coppard would have to stand for reelection in May 2024, two years earlier than planned. 

⚽ Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday’s twin promotions could bring in millions to the city’s economy, report The Star. Wednesday had their open top bus parade yesterday, just weeks after United did the same. Councillor Martin Smith, the Lib Dem chair of the council’s economic development and skills committee, says the success of the city’s two teams will also create hundreds of jobs and help “show the world Sheffield is a great place to visit.”

Things to do

🍔 It’s the first weekend of the month, so that must means that the always hugely popular Peddler Market is returning to its Neepsend warehouse. On Friday from 5pm-11pm and Saturday from 2pm-11pm, 92 Burton Road will be packed full of some of the best street food available as well as craft stalls, live music, DJs and entertainment. They’ve also got a fancy new website where they showcase all the food, drink and craft stalls that will be available. 

🧵 On Saturday, 3 June 11am-4pm Meersbrook Makers’ Market returns to the United Reformed Church on Chesterfield Road. The market will bring together some of the best talent in Sheffield and showcase more than 25 amazing makers, artists and designers. Also on Saturday, the Totley Vintage Fair is on at St John’s Church from 10am-4pm. Expect 22 stalls selling unique antique items as well as delicious cakes and drinks. Entrance fee is £1.

🎻 Also on Saturday, 3 June, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra make a long-awaited return to Sheffield City Hall as part of the Sheffield International Concert Season 2022/23. Conducted by Jonathan Bloxham, the orchestra will perform Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.5, and Beethoven’s Symphony No.7. Doors open at 7pm and tickets are priced £22.50-£30.50.

33 days of sewage flowing into a Sheffield river

Rising on the Hallam Moors, the River Rivelin cascades down a steep valley which runs from the Peak District edge of Sheffield all the way into the city. It’s late spring and the entire valley is green and teeming with life. But this isn’t your average pastoral scene: it’s also busy. We’re only a few minutes from Hillsborough and on nice days it feels like half the population of western Sheffield decamps here. Dog walkers, runners, hikers and day trippers are all enjoying the river by the time I arrive.

As I set off from the Rivelin Park cafe, I’m not exactly sure what I’m meant to be looking for. River pollution is currently a big story in England, and rightly so, when not a single waterway in the country is safe to swim in. Determined to find out how serious the problem was in Sheffield, I’ve come looking for one of the Rivelin’s combined sewer overflows, also known as CSOs. During periods of heavy rain, this Victorian technology allows sewage (and runoff — that’s the ‘combined’ mixture) that would normally go to treatment plants to escape into the river system, rather than flooding into people’s homes. While the practice is completely legal, many people argue that the privatised water companies should be investing more of their huge profits in preventing it.

It’s one thing to know what CSOs are, quite another to actually find one, short of the water authorities installing a series of large “X marks the spot” signs. So I head in the right direction and hope for the best.

Walking up the river I bump into Sarah, who lives in Hillsborough. It’s her day off so she’s doing one of her favourite walks to meet her partner for a drink at the Rivelin Hotel, before walking back down the same way. Sarah has never seen any pollution in the river, or indeed the CSO, but she tells me she probably wouldn’t know what she was looking for anyway. She’s read the stories in the news, however, and is concerned about the potential for people and animals getting ill.

“The thought of it is horrible,” she tells me. “In hot weather lots of people from around here go into the river to cool off — and kids go in to paddle as well. Loads of people come to walk their dogs here and let them go in the river all the time. The last thing you want is them splashing around in raw sewage.”

A few minutes further upstream, I find what I’m looking for. The CSO turns out to be a large brick-built structure with a wide outlet pipe fixed into it, sitting on a concrete base on the edge of the southern bank of the river. The imposing system has an industrial feel which makes it feel incongruous in an otherwise idyllic spot. But most people walking and running past pay it no attention at all.

Fly fishing just a few metres upstream from the CSO, I find Bill, 87. As we talk he gets half a bite on his line every so often, but the fish get away before he can reel them in. He tells me he’s been fishing on the Rivelin since the 1950s and thinks it’s generally quite a healthy river. He hasn’t seen much pollution on it in all that time and says the animal life in the river — the fish and the mayflies that  are currently hatching — are probably a good indication the water is in reasonably good condition.

He’s not aware of the nearby CSO but has heard the stories in the news about water companies and sewage outflows. “It’s been going on a long time,” he tells me, referring to the long-standing practice of using rivers as a kind of “safety valve” for the sewage system, allowing waste to escape into rivers during periods of heavy rain rather than flooding into people’s homes — a practice that predates our current debate by well over 100 years. Still, while he accepts that it’s far from ideal, he questions whether anything can be done about it; “It would cost a lot of money and I’m not sure the water companies would want to invest that much.”

Bill is right to say that sewage has been discharged into our rivers for a very long time; CSOs date back to Victorian times. Campaigners such as singer (and fly fisherman) Feargal Sharkey have been incredibly effective recently in holding the water companies’ feet to the fire over the issue. But, apart from a former member of The Undertones making a big noise about CSOs on social media, the main reason they have become a prominent story is that we now have the data.

In 2020, Yorkshire Water — along with all the other water companies in England — were told by the government they had to publish data on how much raw sewage they were discharging into our waterways each year. They’re required to count the number of separate discharges and for how many hours the leaks have taken place. Though in some cases discharges are diverted into underground culverts, most of the them go directly into rivers.

In Sheffield, the biggest leak was from Catcliffe Road Combined Sewer Overflow, which decants into a small stream in Darnall. This overflowed for 804 hours, the equivalent of 33 days straight. Most of the other large overflows go into the Don, including 782 hours of untreated sewage leaked from Blackburn Meadows Treatment plant — which is right next to a nature reserve — and 666 hours worth at Hillsborough. There were smaller clusters of leaks along both the Porter and Sheaf valleys, at locations including Endcliffe Park, Millhouses Park, and Graves Park.

In a statement released to The Tribune, Nicola Shaw, CEO of Yorkshire Water, said they were sorry they had not acted quickly enough to tackle the issue of storm overflows into rivers. She added that despite the number and duration of discharges from storm overflows in Yorkshire decreasing in 2022 they understood they were happening more than Yorkshire Water customers would like, and that they were determined to tackle this issue and do their bit for river health. 

“Tackling overflows, which were designed into the system as a relief valve, is a priority for us, but it is also a significant task,” she said. “In Yorkshire, we have over 2,200 overflows and we know replumbing the whole of Yorkshire is not a quick fix as it would be both significantly disruptive and costly to customers. But, further investment from our shareholders is helping us tackle this issue.”

According to our map, in comparison to the Don, the Rivelin and Loxley seem to be getting off relatively lightly. But to what extent can any level of discharge be considered safe? The CSO I visited, which was just upstream from where people and animals were happily playing in the river, discharged into the Rivelin 65 times for a total of 183.83 hours in 2020 — more than seven and a half full days.However, some believe that even this data isn’t telling the full story.