Call to end 'turds-in-street'

Too many sewage incidents in East Devon

“Turds in the street” should be a thing of the past in East Devon – or at least that’s the hope for 2022.

East Devon councillors say they’ve had enough of surplus sewage spewing into road, so they’ve summonsed South West Water to explain what’s going wrong at a special meeting of the council’s scrutiny committee.

The water company has been under the spotlight after it was revealed that the company made 42,000 raw sewage discharges into Devon’s rivers and coastal areas last year.

It has been particularly bad for residents of Clyst St Mary. The village has flooded with sewage at least 11 times this year, with South West Water offering portable loos to the worst affected households, some of which were left without working toilets for up to 60 hours at a time.

The situation attracted criticism from local councillors and East Devon’s Conservative MP Simon Jupp.

Addressing the scrutiny committee, Councillor Eleanor Rylance (Lib Dems, Democratic Alliance Group, Broadclyst) said: “We actually have turds in the streets in some places when it rains, and that’s really not on. 

“This is 2021 we cannot be running a local area that has this sort of thing happening. We can’t have poo in the streets, we can’t have poo in the rivers and we can’t have poo in the sea. We need to find out why it’s happening and get it sorted out.”

Councillor Jess Bailey (Independent, West Hill and Aylesbeare), who suggested the meeting with South West Water and got unanimous agreement from committee members, said the issue was a “matter of massive public concern.”

“Having clean water in our rivers and on our coast is absolutely fundamental to East Devon, both for wildlife and tourism.”

Speaking recently about concerns over flooding in East Devon, South West Water’s engineering director Matt Crabtree said: “We are committed to delivering a permanent solution which will involve detailed works and upgrades to our network.”