{"id":222984,"date":"2025-10-14T02:38:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T02:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/222984\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T02:38:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T02:38:17","slug":"work-starts-to-stop-flow-of-sewage-into-lymington-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/222984\/","title":{"rendered":"Work starts to stop flow of sewage into Lymington River"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linzi Kinghorn and<\/p>\n

Marcus WhiteLymington<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Don Mackenzie from Lymington Society said residents had often reported a “terrible smell” to Southern Water<\/p>\n

Work has started to stop raw sewage from flowing into a river. <\/p>\n

Southern Water said it had found properties in Lymington, Hampshire, with illegal drainage connections, sending toilet waste into surface water pipes.<\/p>\n

Previously, Friends of the Earth campaigners said levels of E. coli – a possible sign of faecal contamination – in the Lymington River were 80 times the safe limit.<\/p>\n

Southern Water said it would use tankers to remove the foul water until the problem was fixed.<\/p>\n

Lymington resident Jon Holland, a former drainage engineer, was involved in the E. Coli testing.<\/p>\n

He said: “This is absolutely terrible. The safe limit is 1,000… and this is 81,000 units of E. coli.<\/p>\n

“It’s particularly unfortunate that we raised this in July and it’s now October.”<\/p>\n

Mr Holland said the problem had been identified as coming from about 20 properties in Brunswick Place, which were built in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

\"Jon<\/p>\n

Lymington resident Jon Holland said the river had unsafe levels of E. coli bacteria<\/p>\n

Lymington Society chair Don Mackenzie said the issue was probably more widespread.<\/p>\n

He said: “It’s likely I think that lots of properties round here maybe are not connected into the sewer but are connected into the surface water drain.”<\/p>\n

He said residents had waited for years for action from Southern Water after reports of a “terrible smell” near the sewer outfalls.<\/p>\n

The water company said it had not been able to replicate the E. Coli results in its own testing, although it said the misconnections could explain intermittent readings.<\/p>\n

In a statement, it said: “Local sewers, pumping stations and treatment sites are working as they should, but a number of illegal connections have been uncovered. <\/p>\n

“These are private homes or businesses with wastewater pipes wrongly plumbed directly into surface water drains, causing pollution.<\/p>\n

“We’re taking steps to fix these and are using tankers to remove wastewater from the area, to protect the local environment. <\/p>\n

“We are also working closely with the local authority on our ongoing investigations into any other contributing factors to water quality concerns.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Linzi Kinghorn and Marcus WhiteLymington BBC Don Mackenzie from Lymington Society said residents had often reported a “terrible…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-222984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}