A feature of the Thames Water website is that it shows real time information about when sewage is being discharged into watercourses. The sewage is discharged from what are known as “storm outflows”. For example on 5 January this showed that the Witney sewage works had been discharging into Curbridge Ditch for 200 hours 50 minutes and still going (that’s in excess of five days non-stop. There hadn’t been a storm but it had been raining a lot. The Bourton-on-the-Water plant had been discharging into groundwater for 153 hours 3 minutes. Perhaps they will have to rename it Bourton-on-the-Something Else.
Editors
By 9 January the Witney plant had been discharging non-stop for twelve and a half days and the Bourton plant for about ten days. And it's still raining.