When Martin Greenbank moved into his Guildford home 15 years ago, he thought it would be a perfect fit for his growing family.

Close to an excellent public high school, the back garden is in bloom, with daffodils blooming under a cooking apple tree and lavender and shrubbery surrounding his meticulously maintained lawn.

It would be the perfect place for his children to play – or so he thought.

Because, for the past 18 months, “every moderate rain” has seen raw sewage pouring out of the manhole cover in his back garden, flowing across the lawn, along the terrace and out the back door.

“Our gardens are filled with all the dirty stuff – sewage, toilet paper, wet wipes, faeces,” he said.

“Stinks.”

The only reason it didn’t come into the house again in February was that he put sandbags outside to prevent it from happening again.

Raw sewage can be filled with diseases like E. coli and salmonella, and it only takes a few cells to enter your body to make you sick.

Mr Greenbank and his wife are temporarily refusing to let their three children use their back garden.

“I shouldn’t have to pay any price for this now, [while] Dumping other people’s waste water in our gardens. How shameless to think this is acceptable. “

“National Scandal”

This problem, known as sewer flooding, is often caused by blockages or excess sewage or stormwater, causing raw sewage to gush out of weak points in the system, such as manhole covers.

Between April 2022 and March 2023, 47,000 incidents of sewer outflows occurred on private land and gardens in England and Wales.

While fewer cases have been recorded in recent years, cases occurring on public lands are not reported in the same way.

That means the overall numbers are likely much higher, making it difficult to determine how serious the problem is.

Aidan Taylor, a lecturer in microbiology at the University of Reading, said the situation in parts of England was reminiscent of “Victorian London, when raw sewage was openly dumped on the streets, creating a risk of sewage-borne diseases such as cholera.” Outbreaks are common.”

He called the recurrence of the situation today “shocking.” “We’re likely to see outbreaks of disease as a result.”

Labor called it “unbelievable” and the Liberal Democrats called it a “national scandal”.

The problem stems from the fact that the UK has a comprehensive sewer network.

This means stormwater and sewage from homes and businesses are flushed through the same pipes into treatment plants for cleaning.

Emergency releases into rivers – known as combined sewer overflows – have recently sparked widespread public outrage over the polluted state of the nation’s waterways.

But sewer overflows are affecting people closer to home when sewage flows from weak points in the sewer system, such as manhole covers, dumping toilet paper, stench and misery onto streets where people live and children walk to school.

‘Human feces all over the lawn’

This is happening all over the country.

On a Sunday last September, Rebecca Jordan was living in Barrowden, a pretty village of stone houses with thatched roofs in the East Midlands Between the mountains and rivers of Rutland. .

Worried about the “downpour” coming down the hill towards her house, she looked out the window at the garden, where her chickens and dogs usually roam happily and her children play on the trampoline.

But on this day, she saw the manhole cover raised onto the lawn and “there were absolutely tons of poop coming out. There’s really no other way to put it, to be honest.”

“There was human feces all over the lawn. Toilet paper, tampons, you name it, it was there.

“Wet wipes, something you wouldn’t think people would flush down the toilet.

“It turns out everyone in our village does it because it’s all over my lawn.”

She praised Anglian Water’s quick response and repairs. But elsewhere in the country, activists have long complained that the same thing is happening.

In Grimston, north Norfolk, every time there was moderate rain, manhole covers “removed untreated water from the same site for more than two years,” according to the Gaywood River Revival Campaign, which aims to protect the river. Sewage and sewage sprayed into local chalk streams from the same site”. Chalk flow.

A spokesman for the group told Sky News the “absolutely disgusting” smell “hung in the air outside”.

In Oxfordshire, Ash Smith, of the WASP group, discovered toilet paper leaking from a manhole cover on Station Road, Shipton-under-Wychwood, in February this year.

Along the road, he said, “kids walk or bike to school.” “You’re going to get splashed by the car and it’s going to be thrown up in the air.”

Who is to blame?

Sometimes this is due to blockages in the system, such as tree roots and bricks near Martin’s home, or wet wipes and fat in Norfolk. Since then, Thames Water and Anglian have both sent their teams to unblock the pipes and promised to carry out the clean-up.

But all water companies Sky News spoke to said Extremely wet winterthere were many named storms that simply overwhelmed their systems.

If your sewer line is poorly sealed or broken, rainwater will either wash down the drain or seep into the pipe through the wet ground.

The Met Office said it expected climate change to be unlikely to help as it would concentrate rainfall in the UK into more intense downpours.

Regulator Ofwat has asked water companies to start preparing for the changes.

Meanwhile, the country’s aging sewer systems are also threatening much-needed house building, with the Environment Agency recently objecting to a development in Oxfordshire on the grounds that the sewer system could not cope.

Campaigners believe the system should be designed or upgraded to cope with heavy rain.

Mr Smith said: “It’s no surprise that it rains in winter. We’re tired of hearing the same lame excuses about the weather.”

Residents ‘expect action’ to stop sewer flooding

Sir John Amit, chairman of the National Infrastructure Committee, the government advisory body, said residents “can rightly expect action to address these alarming incidents”.

He told Sky News water companies should better maintain and expand their systems “to reduce the risk of blockages and collapses”.

A spokesman for the British Water Industry Group said: “We understand the inconvenience that sewer flooding can cause and thankfully there has been a 20% reduction in sewage flooding of gardens and land over the past few years.”

The company proposes investing £10.2bn to “fundamentally increase the capacity of our sewers to stop sewer flooding and leaks”, including the installation of huge storm water tanks to contain storm water and sustainable drainage projects.

But it urged the government to implement policies including ending developers’ automatic rights to connect new homes to sewers and allowing water companies to repair drains on private properties.

Labor and the Lib Dems accused the government of allowing water companies to get away with it.

Lib Dem environment spokesman Tim Farron MP said: “This is a national scandal. The government is allowing these companies to make huge profits while allowing pipelines and infrastructure to collapse.”

Labour’s shadow environment secretary Steve Reid called it “incredible” and urged the government to “stand up to water companies”.

The Lib Dems said water companies should pay affected residents, while Labor said regulator Ofwat would be given the power to ban water boss bonuses.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs told Sky News it was “taking tough action to hold polluters to account”, including quadrupling inspections of water companies, recruiting more staff and advising on a ban on water company bonuses.

“As part of our efforts to reduce the amount of water entering the sewers, we are also adding sustainable drainage systems to new developments and will be consulting on this soon.”

As for Mr Greenbank, of Guildford, Thames Water sent a team to clear his pipes after being contacted by Sky News and is clearing his garden, although there has not been significant rain since to test the repairs.

“But I won’t be eating anything from that apple tree for at least the next year,” he said.

Water company says it’s cleaning up and making improvements

A spokesman for Thames Water apologized for the sewer flooding at Martin’s Greenbank home and recognized “how difficult this situation is for any customer and unfortunately heavy rain and blocked sewer pipes caused the flood”.

Its engineers “have now cleared the pipe, which should resolve the issue and help prevent something like this from happening again” and are processing refunds and goodwill payments.

Regarding the manhole cover in Shipton-under-Wychwood, Thames Water said its engineers found and cleared a “sewer blockage caused by a combination of fat and wet wipes”.

“Customers can help us prevent blockages like these, which cause sewage to back up down the drain, by simply flushing the three P’s (pee, poo and paper).”

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An Anglian Water spokesman said “ongoing issues at Grimston Pumping Station are caused by continued wet weather causing surface water and groundwater to seep into our sewer network”.

“We are working closely with the Environment Agency to monitor this issue and have teams inspecting the site regularly. We are currently using water tankers to remove excess water and create more capacity in the network.”

Thames Water also apologized to people “affected by manhole overflows this winter” in Shrivenham.

“Heavy rainfall overloaded our local sewer system, causing severely diluted wastewater to leak from nearby manholes.”

“Long-term rainfall has been above average…and groundwater levels are also at normal to abnormally high for this time of year,” the report said.

It plans to complete a £17m upgrade of nearby Witney sewage treatment plants this year, “which will increase treatment capacity by 66% by the end of this year”.

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