The RNLI has defended the action of its lifeguards in advising swimmers to get out of the sea over fears of a sewage leak that turned out not to have existed.<\/p>\n
Weymouth beach was “red-flagged” on Thursday afternoon after “concerns were raised about water quality”.<\/p>\n
Weymouth Town Council later said the report of pollution in the sea was “unfounded”.<\/p>\n
The Environment Agency also confirmed there had been “no sewage spill”.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the RNLI said its lifeguards had taken a “precautionary approach”.<\/p>\n
“In the interests of public safety, the beach was red flagged for the final 90 minutes of the day and beach users were advised to stay out of the water.<\/p>\n
“RNLI lifeguards continually assess a range of hazards that could affect public safety and take appropriate action where necessary. <\/p>\n
“Their primary responsibility is helping to keep beach users safe and decisions are made based on the information available at the time,” it added.<\/p>\n
Details of the evacuation spread quickly on social media.<\/p>\n
Later on Thursday, the town council posted on social media: “A report received from a member of public was investigated and was found to be unfounded. <\/p>\n
“As a result, beach users were able to continue swimming and enjoying the area as normal.”<\/p>\n
It said with current weather conditions remaining dry, the likelihood of storm overflow discharges was reduced.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Environment Agency said: “We closely monitor bathing waters for any impact on water quality and confirm there was no sewage spill yesterday.<\/p>\n
“If we suspect water quality will be impacted, we won’t hesitate to issue advice against swimming and promote that advice on our Swimfo webpage and through council beach signage.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The RNLI has defended the action of its lifeguards in advising swimmers to get out of the sea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-698117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}