One man, who did not want to be named, said his son – who is in his 20s – had been swimming in the river with friends on Thursday, and had “no issues whatsoever, you could see the bottom of the river even when it was deep”.
However, the next day they noticed the water “was a bit cloudier, but assumed it was just run-off from the thunder storms in the area”.
On Saturday morning, the father woke up to his son being “violently sick” with “uncontrollable diarrhea”, with the friends he had been swimming with suffering from the same symptoms.
After he saw posts on social media of others being sick after swimming in the river, he used a website to track local sewage discharges.
He said according to the website, upstream of where his son had been swimming United Utilities had discharged sewage across multiple sites during Thursday night and Friday morning.
“It’s completely irresponsible to do this in the middle of hot, dry, sunny weather,” he said.
“Anybody with an ounce of common sense knows there’ll be loads of people in the rivers, especially children.”