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There are fears for Devon and Cornwall's coastlines following a "catastrophic" spill of biobeads in Sussex. Earlier this week, Southern Water was forced to apologise after millions of the tiny plastic pellets were accidentally released into the sea.
The beads are used in the last step of the cleaning process before treated effluent water is released back into rivers or the sea. The spill is believed to have happened after the "failure of a screening filter" in the treatment process.
Now, environmentalists fear that a similar incident could be repeated in Devon and Cornwall - and they claim there have been previous spills in the area that have been just as bad as the incident in Sussex.
Like several other water companies, South West Water introduced biobead-dependent sewage treatment works in the early 1990s in some locations, as they occupied a smaller footprint than conventional plants and, when operating correctly, deliver better-quality effluent.
However, an in-depth investigation by the Cornish Plastic Pollution Coalition suggested that repeated losses had taken place - both low level ones through poor handling and catastrophic ones through equipment failure - which they claim caused widespread environmental contamination.
It claims that a major 2010 spill from the Newham sewage treatment works near Truro led to tens of millions of biobeads washing up all along beaches not just in Cornwall, but in northern France, Belgium and Holland too.
It said that biobeads have also been found polluting many other places, including the banks of the river Plym (downstream of the huge wastewater treatment plant in Plympton), Charmouth beach in west Dorset, and Dawlish Warren in Devon.
South West Water has said that of the minority of its plants that use biobeads, there are "robust containment measures which are inspected to ensure beads are kept within the treatment works".
The CPPC report found that biobeads, which are mostly black or grey in colour and can easily go unnoticed as they look like grit, are readily consumed by wildlife, such as seabirds. The pellets are contaminated with lead and bromine due to originally being made from recycled electronics - a practice that has since been outlawed. They are also superficially contaminated with bacteria and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from the sewage treatment process.
Biobead plants were intended to be phased out after about 30 years. However, instead of replacing these plants with a newer, less hazardous system, South West Water is now recycling its worn-out original biobeads (approximately 3-4mm in diameter) into new, slightly larger beads (4.5 - 8.5 mm in diameter).
While, in theory, these should be less likely to escape from the plants, volunteer beach cleaners from the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre and the River Char Action Group say they have already found them on the beach at Charmouth in Dorset - not far from the Uplyme sewage treatment works which is run by South West Water and is the only plant so far where the new beads have been introduced.
Claire Wallerstein, from the Cornish Plastic Pollution Coalition, said: "We are very concerned that South West Water is using new beads to extend the use of these old wastewater plants beyond the end of their planned 30-year lifespan - we fear this is a recipe for potential disaster.
"A breach in the containment mesh was what caused the devastating Cornish spill back in 2010 and now, 15 years on, the infrastructure of these plants is surely at even greater risk of rupture."
Philip Strange, a Devon-based nature writer and scientist who has been campaigning on the issue for years, said: "Even though South West Water installed secondary containment mesh at all its biobead plants following the CPPC investigation back in 2018, in an effort to prevent future leaks and spills, the fact that the new, bigger beads are already showing up on Dorset beaches is incredibly worrying.
"Clearly something is going wrong. We feel the system is inherently unsafe and we'd urge South West Water to pause in rolling these new beads out to its other plants and instead introduce a system that will clean our wastewater without also contaminating our beaches and endangering wildlife."
South West Water's statement
A spokesperson for South West Water said: "Only eight of our 655 wastewater treatment works use biobeads, which are all fitted with two levels of robust containment measures and are inspected to ensure beads are kept within the treatment works. Decommissioning these plants is very costly as it requires the whole treatment process to be completely replaced. We are aiming to remove the biobead process at our remaining sites when they are required to be upgraded in the future."
Following the incident in Sussex, Southern Water launched an investigation and issued a statement. A spokesperson said at the time said: "After completing the initial stages of a thorough investigation, which is continuing, we believe it is highly likely that the beads have come from our Eastbourne wastewater treatment works.
"We've identified a failure of a screening filter, which has apparently led to beads used in the treatment process being released into the sea during heavy rainfall. The screen should have prevented this occurring.
"We are very sorry this has happened and are doing everything possible to investigate and resolve the problem."
Helena Dollimore, the Labour and Co-operative MP for Hastings and Rye, said: "Southern Water now admits the toxic plastic beads on Camber Sands were released two weeks ago from their Eastbourne treatment plant during Storm Benjamin. It beggars belief that Southern Water failed to detect the loss of millions of biobeads for an entire fortnight, leaving them free to wash up on our East Sussex coastline and cause an environmental catastrophe."
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