The mudflats off Southport spread out at low tide like a wavy brown carpet that stretches to the far horizon. This huge stretch of the North-West shoreline seems deserted except from the circling seagulls, yet there is a bright spot just under the sand.
Few hundred yards from the coast, in a place called Penfold South, shellfishers recently found a large, untapped cockle bed.
It includes roughly 5,000 tonnes of the highly sought-after mollusks, which might fetch as much as £10 million on the open market, said cockle harvesters Simon Ward and Terry Davies.
The local cockle-picking season began on September 1 and by mid-October, when the cockles will have reached the proper size, they plan to start harvesting them the traditional way.
The mud is liquefied by rocking a wooden board with handles resembling goalposts, known as a tamp, from side to side while it is spread out flat.
The idea behind this is to deceive the cockles into believing that the tide is rising, which causes them to climb to the surface and be raked into netted bags.
The business is currently very tightly controlled (a result of the terrible drowning of at least 21 Chinese pickers working illegally for a brutal gangmaster in Morecambe Bay in 2004), and the spoils would be shared with other licenced fisherman who have a permit that costs £500.
Even yet, Mr. Ward, 39, and Mr. Davies, 57, who have seen hard times recently, stand to make a very nice profit if the bed can be farmed.
But a few days ago, their hopes of profiting from this abundant Merseyside beach took a sudden hit. They believe this setback was brought on by United Utilities pumping raw sewage into the adjoining estuary (UU).
The North-West company, along with other English water utilities, has been under criticism in recent weeks when it was discovered that it releases substantial volumes of untreated home and industrial waste into oceans and rivers.
One may understand their scepticism after researching this issue, whose perpetrators are often characterised as avaricious monopolies with monstrously overpaid leaders (UU’s yacht-owning chief executive Steve Mogford allegedly received about £3 million in pay and bonuses last year).
The tale of two resourceful cockle fisherman, who battled a large business that frequently pollutes the environment on an alarming scale for their livelihood, highlights many of the criticisms levelled at the privatised water sector.
It bears echoes of the Julia Roberts Oscar-winning film Erin Brockovich from 2000.
The movie depicts the real-life battle of a menial legal assistant to establish that a sizable power corporation poisoned the drinking water in her little Californian community.
However, that historic case was resolved with a record-breaking $333 million payment from the accused company. Here, it won’t take place.
The mudflats are where the story starts. The Food Standards Agency must evaluate the healthiness of shellfish beds before they can be harvested.
Depending on the amount of E. coli bacteria (which are present in human and animal faeces and cause illness) found in samples taken from the crustaceans, they are categorised as A, B, or C.
Class A fish must have less than 230 E. coli per 100 grammes of flesh in order to be consumed fresh from the water.
Only seven English shellfish grounds currently meet this standard, though critics argue that this is itself a damning indictment of the water firms given the massive amount of raw sewage dumped into inshore fishing grounds.
Their outdated and overworked system of underground tanks and pipes, known as storm overflows, released their foul broth 372,500 times last year.
These overflows pump untreated household and industrial waste mixed with rainwater into the waterways after significant downpours.
They were turned on for more than 2.7 million hours in total. However, the precise number is unknown because many of the sensors used to monitor them are broken.
Not only the water companies are embarrassed by this tsunami of filth, which has been pumped out for decades but has only recently attracted national attention.
It also embarrasses the government, which has reduced money for monitoring these businesses’ operations and rejected an amendment to the environment bill that would have made stopping their dumping a requirement under the law.
Back to the cockles, however. Class B items may be sold, but only after being purified, which lowers their worth.
They must be tested eight times, often at weekly intervals, and have E. coli levels below 4,600 per 100 grammes in 90% of the samples in order to get this grade.
If not, they are classified as Class C and need further care before being sold.
Up until this week, the new Southport cockle bed was largely anticipated to be Class B, the rating often given in England (though not on the continent, where the coastal waters are generally cleaner).
They would have had a wholesale worth of around £2 per kg as a result. However, some merchants ship to Scandinavia, France, and Spain where English cockles are in high demand. Mr. Davies and Mr. Ward supply dealers selling mostly to British restaurants and seafood stands.
On August 15, a measurement at Penfold South revealed 1,700 E. coli per 100 grammes, much below the allowed level, which was very positive.
However, the shellfishermen were appalled when the most recent result was published online.
The bacteria level inexplicably increased to 35,000, more than 20 times more than it had been nine days previously, even though the cockles were harvested on August 24.
More specimens will be analysed in the following weeks. The value of the cockles will drop to 80p per kilo if they breach the upper level once again, rendering the tedious task of cultivating them scarcely worthwhile.
If harvesting is completely prohibited, £10 million worth of cockles will remain buried in the contaminated muck.
So what brought on this sharp increase? Given that sizable herds graze on the salt marshes surrounding Southport, as noted by United Utilities and acknowledged by Mr. Davies, it may have been caused by cow droppings being carried onto the dunes by the rain that finally arrived in mid-August.
But was it just a coincidence that the extraordinarily high faecal bacteria level appeared a few days after it became known that storm overflows had flooded sewage into coastal waterways throughout the nation?
In one frightening image, the water near Seaford, East Sussex, was stained dark due to a massive slick of brown muck.
According to information compiled by the advocacy organisation Surfers Against Sewage, practically every West Coast beach, from Cornwall to the Solway Firth, was made unsafe for swimming on numerous days last month.
And was it a coincidence that people taking a bath in Morecambe Bay, 50 miles to the north, scurried out of the water in disgust just ten days before the erroneous sample was collected at Southport, claiming to have come across a tide of floating stools?
Regardless of the facts, a startling interactive map created by The Rivers Trust demonstrates that the business routinely discharges raw sewage into the River Ribble and its tributaries, which run into the Irish Sea near Southport.
The likelihood that these facilities—which are adjacent to the cockle bed—caused the contamination—as shown by a review of their records—becomes increasingly convincing.
Sludge was injected 43 times for a total of 207 hours into Crossens Pool, which flows into the Ribble Estuary, by one wastewater treatment facility last year.
A few miles away, on Balmoral Drive, the sewage storm overflow activated 58 times over the course of 693 hours, while on Rufford Road, it poured into the Three Pools Waterway 36 times over the course of 183 hours.
The many nature lovers who frequent the mudflats, an essential place for wildfowl to nest, will undoubtedly find this upsetting.
If UU was the cause of the 20-fold rise in E. coli, Mr. Davies asserts that it wouldn’t be the first time that shellfish beds have been ruined by UU.
Five years ago, he claims, contamination forced the closure of a mussel ground in Lytham St. Annes just days after the company acknowledged dumping sewage there.
Regarding this purported occurrence, UU claims that it “doesn’t have any specifics.” However, it does acknowledge a significant sewage leak at Morecambe in 2011 that forced the closure of mussel grounds. It calls this a “rare operational occurrence” and claims that “substantial investment” has been made to address issues at the plant.
When I ask Mr. Davies whether the shellfishermen requested compensation for their lost wages as a result of these instances, he laughs hollowly. He is obviously not planning to act like Erin Brockovich.
He informs me, “We have tried in the past, but it is futile.” “The company is too wealthy and strong for us,” I said. How could I possibly afford to sue such a huge corporation as UU?
It is in itself a law. Additionally, neither the regional councils nor the Food Standards Agency will resist it. They are terrified by it. Simply laying off a few fishermen is simpler. We can only hope that it won’t rain much before the last few samples are collected at Penfold South (so that the sands aren’t flooded by more sewage or cattle runoff).
A UU representative responded that the company had just finished a £164 million upgrade at its Blackburn treatment works to enhance the health of the River Ribble. By 2030, more investment is anticipated.
The estuary’s complicated currents and tides, however, might have a variety of effects on the water quality.
Although storm overflows were “a contributory influence,” the combined effects of animal grazing on salt marshes, individual septic tanks, and urban runoff were “more significant.”
I suppose so. Undoubtedly, some impartial professionals would have a different opinion.
However, little to nothing is going to be done even if the mudflats off Southport, or in fact any other English river, are once again contaminated by sewage this fall.
After a diligent environment investigator found that Southern Water had unlawfully released raw sewage into the rivers more than 6,900 times between 2010 and 2015, the corporation was fined a record £90 million last year. To dispose of garbage as cheaply as feasible, this was done.
However, a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation last week found that 870 sewage overflow lines are still in use without licences.
Severn Trent owns 420 of them, Welsh Water (now a not-for-profit organisation) owns 184, and Northumbrian Water owns 61.
To get licences, these businesses claimed to be “working with the Environment Agency.”
Even though it sounds abhorrent, it is absolutely legal to discharge untreated wastewater into rivers and oceans to prevent a sewage backlog when heavy rains overwhelm the infrastructure.
My hometown is Morecambe, and last week when I went back, I discovered storm overflow pipelines concealed at numerous surrounding tourist attractions.
Children fished for crabs in a rockpool at the entrance of one outfall pipe, oblivious to the possible dangers, even though it was plainly designated as hazardous.
Residents claim that the pipe empties a few yards offshore during times of severe rain.
I was saddened to read that this bay, the second largest in England and in my opinion the most picturesque, was subjected to the longest continuous flow of untreated sewage in 2021. The duration was 5,000 hours.
It was similarly surprising to learn that untreated sewage spilled into a brook close to my Surrey house for 1,778 hours in the last year, which is the equivalent of 74 days. My grandkids won’t be brought there to play any more.
We must hope that things become better. However, the outlook is dismal, according to Helen Nightingale, who spent the most of her 31 years working for the Environment Agency (EA) looking into pollution issues in the rivers of Lancashire and North Yorkshire.
The recently departed officer told me how the EA’s understaffing and a system that permits water firms to regulate themselves undercut attempts to keep rivers clean.
She was inspired to speak out by her love of the countryside and respect for her overworked former coworkers.
There are now just four officers instead of the nine she originally led, which enabled them to check locations of alleged contamination.
Vacancies are being advertised, but they are proving difficult to fill since fully qualified officers are paid £24,000 a year for a difficult job that might include unpleasant encounters.
She claims that due to an overwhelming number of calls, EA officials are told to only record severe events (categories 1 and 2), such as those in which people’s health is in danger or fish and other species have been killed. Minor occurrences are disregarded.
Even worse, the lack of EA officers means that when members of the public express concerns about the state of a waterway, a staff member from the water company usually investigates them.
According to Mrs. Nightingale, these staff members occasionally put the water company’s reputation and profit margin ahead of environmental protection.
There have been instances when a water provider misclassified an occurrence as a category 3 when it was only a category 2. ‘ They would recognise the difference, absolutely.
But would you always speak the truth if you were employed by a private company and required to conduct an investigation on your own? especially if your supervisor is pressuring you to keep your five-star rating.
It’s similar to the cops asking you whether you’ve been speeding, someone once said. You’re not going to say it.” Likewise, she continues, the general population doesn’t always behave appropriately. During the course of her lengthy career, she seen sewage pipes blocked with a variety of items, including sanitary towels and a toy truck. Un abattoir
even completely flushed a sheep’s head away, creating an obstruction.
However, these offences pale in comparison to the billions of gallons of germ-filled sewage that water corporations spew from their pipes.
What can be done to put an end to the behaviour? The argument is intricate. It is sufficient to mention that the industry disagrees with the majority of academics and almost all environmental organisations.
Water corporations assert that replacing the outdated, 21,000-mile sewage network may cost £660 billion, raising water costs and disrupting towns and cities.
Sewage overflows, according to groups like The Rivers Trust and Surfers Against Sewage, could be significantly reduced for a fraction of that.
For its part, United Utilities highlights the £1.25 billion it has spent on the North-West shoreline over the last 30 years as well as the $230 million it will spend by 2025 to lessen the effects of storm overflows.
The business bragged that the area’s seafood and swimming waters were “cleaner than they have ever been.”
The worrying E.coli reading from Southport’s cockle bed, on the other hand, portrays a quite different image.
The filthy-rich water barons will never be the friends of the fisherman unless they start acting responsibly, cutting bonuses and payouts while spending far more money to stem the tide of pollution.