Swimmers have been told to stay out of the water at a Devon beach after a pollution incident.<\/p>\n
The Environment Agency is investigating after it detected “elevated readings of ammonia” in a brook which connects to the bathing water at Exmouth beach.<\/p>\n
South West Water (SWW) confirmed it had not had any storm overflow spills in the area.<\/p>\n
Beachgoer Jamie Steadman said: “We spent money on all day parking, went to the beach for an hour and [were] then told we can’t swim in the water.”<\/p>\n
Mr Steadman visited the beach at about 11:00 BST before lifeguards and the council started to display warning signs.<\/p>\n
He said lifeguards would not reveal further details about the pollution after instructing swimmers to exit the water.<\/p>\n
“The response was ‘we can’t tell you but there is pollution in the water’,” he added.<\/p>\n
“They’re telling everyone to get out of the water… but there’s no explanation as to why, what or when.<\/p>\n
“The whole of Exmouth beach is now cordoned off.”<\/p>\n
East Devon District Council (EDDC) said a pollution incident reporting tool (PIRT) was issued as a precaution by the Environment Agency due to “elevated ammonia levels”.<\/p>\n
The Environment Agency said: “South West Water are supporting this action by checking their assets, including for any potential misconnections to their sewerage network in the area.”<\/p>\n
EDDC said council officers lowered the blue flag and lifeguards would fly the red flag to advise against swimming.<\/p>\n
“No swimming signs will also be displayed,” it said.<\/p>\n
“We hope we can remove these signs and the red flags as soon as possible.”<\/p>\n
SWW said: “The Environment Agency have assured us that they are thoroughly investigating and we will continue to support in any way we can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Swimmers have been told to stay out of the water at a Devon beach after a pollution incident.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-70973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}