Sewage spills into sea at St Agnes beach
There are multiple pollution alerts in force across the north coast of Cornwall
There has been a sewage spill at a Cornish beach.
It happened at Trevaunance Cove in St Agnes yesterday (Sunday 30 October). A large section of the sea was seen turning brown.
It comes as multiple pollution alerts have been issued across the north coast of the Duchy, where storm sewage has been discharged in the last 48 hours.
This includes Fistral North, Mawgan Porth and Gwithian Towans.
A spokesperson for South West Water said: "While the storm overflow at St Agnes triggered briefly on Sunday (30 October) following heavy rain, this was a short duration spill and is unlikely to have caused the level of discolouration shown in the video.
"On this occasion, we believe there were other factors which contributed to the discolouration, such as mud in the water dislodged by the heavy rain flowing into the area from a nearby stream and runoff from agricultural land.
"We continue to increase investment in the region’s infrastructure as part of our ongoing commitment to protecting and enhancing the natural environment.
"This year the South West has seen the dramatic changes in weather patterns presented by climate change, as demonstrated in August when the region was declared in Drought. Through these changes we are now experiencing more extreme weather patterns than ever before and this year the South West saw one of the driest and hottest years on record.
"As well as prolonged periods of extremely hot weather, we have seen heavy localised rainfall which hasn’t been able to permeate into the dry ground, meaning significant volumes run into our network, which can cause our storm overflows to trigger."
Storm overflows are designed to release excess storm water into rivers and seas when a prolonged rainfall occurs to prevent the risk of sewage backing up and flooding homes and public spaces by allowing a controlled release.
South West Water add that water quality at Trevaunance Cove has been rated as ‘Excellent’ in the last four classifications by the Environment Agency.