Bathing Water Certification
Friends of the Dart have submitted four bathing water applications for locations on the Dart.
Steamer Quay, Totnes
Stoke Gabriel
Dittisham
Warfleet Creek, Dartmouth
The four locations chosen for the bathing water applications are where there is infrastructure already in place to facilitate access to the river dart and where there is a high level of human interaction with the river and contact with the water.
Bathing water certification is a way of inspiring the updating of wastewater treatment plants to reduce the sewage spills into the river. If Bathing Water Designation is achieved, spills will be reduced to 1-2 per year per combined sewage overflow at the designated sites. SWW will be required to prioritise their budget allocation & work to upgrade infrastructure at the sites.
Yes, that is significantly less sewage in the river including the toxic chemicals and pharmaceutical substances that go along with what goes down the loo.
These Bathing Water Status applications have been made for these places as they have a high number of river users, they also have combined sewage overflows (CSOs) which we would like to see drastically reduced.
The new DEFRA rules for applications to achieve Bathing Water Status at a designated site are:
A minimum of 100 people need to be counted
on 2 days between May & September
during a 4 hour period of time each.
Our community has helped us to make a case that the river is used enough to designate it as a Bathing Water Status site. The applications which were submitted on the 31st of October 2023 were accompanied by over 7000 letters of support and signatories.
Bathing Water quality should be safe for 'bathing' - should a person get their feet wet paddling on the shoreline or riverbank, launching a canoe, rowing a boat, paddle boarding, sailing etc, or get splashed or risk capsizing during their time in the water, the water quality should, needless to say, be of equal safety to a dingy sailor as a bather. Hence, 'getting wet' is a more generic definition.
Friends of the Dart want to achieve their aim of a healthy & safe river the entire length of the River Dart, not just at Bathing Water designated spots, & including areas of the river which have sensitive ecology where we do not want to encourage a lot of human activity, hence longer term, we are proposing a Rivers Health Framework to replace or complement Bathing Water Status.
We will hear if our applications have been successful in May 2024.