The first ever comprehensive waterways map reveals the 'horrifying' reality of England's sewage crisis.

Sewage spills into England's lakes, rivers and seas by water companies more than doubled in 2023.

'The Sewage Map', created by Dr Alex Lipp and Jonny Dawe, shows which river sections are downstream of sewage discharges from storm overflows - in real-time.

The map shows rivers across England, indicating a 'poo' emoji (which Jonny designed) when sewage dischargers are live, a red exclamation mark indicates a spill over the last 48 hours and a green tick indicates no spill reported in the last 48 hours.

As Scotland and Wales are regulated differently, the team currently do not release their data, but hope to in the future.

The map is modelled continuously rather than a river-by-river basis - and 'non' polluted rivers are not shown, to keep the map as simple as possible.

Dr Alex, an Earth and environmental scientist and a lecturer at the Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, said: "Pollution of waterways globally is major issue impacting on human health as well as freshwater and marine ecosystems.

"We wanted to create something that shows the connectivity of sewage pollution, and the thing we are all interested in is rivers.

"Rivers are something people have a very strong relationship to, and sewage going into rivers invokes a strong emotional impact that is not being understood.

"It is so important as a society to have a strong emotional relationship with our environment.

"So we used what data we have to highlight which rivers are being impacted."

According to the Environment Agency’s data for 2023, sewage overflows released untreated sewage for a total duration of 3.6 million hours.

Untreated sewage overflows are responsible for releasing various pollutants, including microplastics, illegal drugs, animal agricultural waste and human effluent, into the environment.

Last May, a team of top engineers and scientists warned people of the growing public health risk from human faeces in the country's rivers, and called for more regular testing.

The presence of faeces can expose people to bacteria such as salmonella and E.coli, which cause diarrhoea and vomiting, or viruses like hepatitis A which can lead to liver infection.

However, human being are not the only ones impacted.

Marine charity Surfers Against Sewage have stated how sewage can cause huge algae blooms, starving water of oxygen and resulting in the death of river and ocean species.

Campaigners are calling for urgent action as the UK now has less than half of its biodiversity remaining - because of human activity.

The map began as a collaboration between Alex, as part of his work as a researcher whilst at Oxford, and Jonny, a web developer.

Due to government legislation, water companies were made to release their sewage discharge data over the last few years - which sparked the pair's interest.

The map then launched in 2023, initially as a 'side project', but Alex said it has now taken on 'a life of its own'.

Alex explained: "Let's be clear, the water companies have not chosen to unveil this data, legislation came into force which meant they had to release it.

"The actual data itself is really limited: all the data tells you is if an overflow is spilling or if it isn't. But we don’t know what it is spilling.

"That's the nature of the monitors in use, for instance, if you want to know how much of an impact these are having on the river system, we need more data, and we don't currently have that.

"The companies have to release data every year - but it's just the annual return: the total numbers of hours of spill for each monitor.

"But what we want to know is was there a spill last week and how does this correspond to rainfall.

"It's a big shame as I want to see if I can match up spill records with water quality, but we cannot compare the two if they don't reveal the true data."

The majority of the UK has a combined sewerage system, so both rainwater and wastewater (from toilets, bathrooms and kitchens) are carried in the same pipes.

Wastewater is typically supposed to be sent to a sewage treatment works, but capacity can sometimes be exceeded during heavy rainfall. This then leads to inundation of sewage works and potential flooding of homes, roads and open spaces.

So the system is designed to overflow occasionally, and discharge excess wastewater into the sea and rivers from combined sewer overflows, external(CSOs) during rainfall.

However, some water companies have been dry spilling - "routinely releasing sewage" outside times of heavy downpours as a result of failing to managing their wastewater treatment plants in breach of their permits, according to industry regulator Ofwat.

Alex explained that since water companies do not provide real-time data on discharge volume or pollutant concentrations, accurately modelling these effects is very difficult.

He explained how all the water companies apart from Thames Water have not released data on the history of spills into their rivers.

He said: "It's really bad, most water companies do not provide easy access to the history of their spill data. If you wanted to look into whether a river had been spilled into over the last week, or months, you cannot.

"Thames Water, to their credit, released this information two years ago and provided third party access to the history of their spill data - with backlash from other companies at the time as it would make them look bad.

"It's really valuable information for a lot of people, including campaigners working on protecting their rivers.

"It means for every other river, all we know is their current status, and the last spill - then we work out how long its been going on.

"But we are not able to go back further."

He added: "This is something which needs a lot of attention: data is one thing but we use models to make decisions from data.

"And we don’t have open transparency on these models - so we spend billions of private and public money on the models, but it’s not clear to work out what they're really doing."

On October 23 2024, the UK government launched a Water Commission to attract the investment required to "clean up our waterways and rebuild our broken water infrastructure".

It reports the Commission's findings will help shape new legislation to reform the water sector so it properly serves the interests of customers and the environment, and Alex urges anyone interested to show their support.

He added: "Greater transparency hurts no one.

"The situation, it's not great, we know it's bad. If it wasn't bad, we wouldn't treat sewage in the first place, so it's no easy fix.

"But hopefully as more data comes in over next ten years well have better understanding of water quality and the impact of sewage on the environment.

"The government legislation means the water companies have to unveil more data and deploy water quality monitors next to the waterflow monitors - which hopefully enables more transparency.

"We've made the data of which rivers are being impacted by pollution accessible and open, and we are happy to support any organisation working towards the same goal."

To see if sewage is affecting your local area, visit https://www.sewagemap.co.uk/.