As the school summer holidays begin, locals and holiday makers have been warned to stay out of the water on three Pembrokeshire beaches due to emergency sewage dumps in the surrounding sea.

Surfers Against Sewage has issued sewage pollution alerts following yesterday’s heavy rain for three Pembrokeshire beaches.

This means that storm sewage has been released from a sewer overflow within the past 48 hours and reduced water quality could make swimming or surfing in the sea unpleasant and possibly dangerous.

The Pembrokeshire beaches with the sewage pollution alerts today, Sunday, July 23, are Newport Sands, Manorbier and Saundersfoot.

The long fall sewage outlet in Newport is 700m from the coast and discharges into Newport Bay. In Manorbier a sewer overflow discharges over the rocks off the headland at the south of the beach and in Saundersfoot the sewer overflows are near the popular beach.

This is the second time within a week that sewage pollution alerts have been issued for both the popular tourist areas of Newport and Saundersfoot.

There are also pollution risk forecasts in place for Broadhaven and Poppit West, these are issued when water quality might be temporarily reduced due to factors such as weather conditions.

In Broadhaven, which has a sewage outlet into the stream in the middle of the beach, sewage was also discharged into the sea last Wednesday, July 19.

Natural Resources Wales says that the storm overflows are needed during times of heavy rainfall to prevent possible flooding of sewage works and the potential for sewage to back up and flood peoples’ homes and businesses.

However, Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) says that the problem is caused by a ‘woefully inadequate antiquated sewerage system’.

“Water companies have failed to invest to protect the coastal and river environment,” says the charity.

“They instead rely on a network of around 18,000 licensed sewer overflows to routinely discharge raw sewage into rivers and the ocean.”

SAS has been campaigning against sewage pollution for decades.

It says that the sheer volume of pollution entering our water means the UK consistently ranks as one of the worst European countries for coastal water quality, while only 14 per cent of the rivers warrant ‘good’ ecological status.

In 2021 alone sewage discharged into rivers and seas 370,000 times for a total of 2.7 million hours.

In the same year Pembrokeshire had the largest amount of sewage dumped into rivers, watercourses and beaches in the whole of England and Wales.

Preseli Pembrokeshire’s beaches had a total of 6754 sewage dumps in 2021, lasting a total of 79,501 hours.

The county’s Blue Flag beaches had a total of 273 sewage dumps last year with the worst incident being on Poppit Sands where sewage dumped 79 times lasting 1,518 hours.

Coppet Hall Beach near Saundersfoot also suffered 79 dumps totalling 1,294 hours.