Storm overflow register · Northumbrian Water

Low Wadsworth sewage works: storm overflow spills 2025

Low Wadsworth sewage treatment works, run by Northumbrian Water, has 1 monitored storm overflow discharging to River Wear. In 2025 it recorded 62 spills totalling 680 hours, against 119 spills and 2,048 hours in 2024. By hours spilling, it ranks 20 of 183 Northumbrian Water works, where 1 spilled longest.

Works size: 15,865 population equivalent (LOW WADSWORTH STW, UWWTD 2018). Used for the spill volume estimate.

Every spill in 2025

Each blue mark is one spill, placed by when it started and sized by how long it lasted. Hover over a mark for the date and duration.

Estimated spill volume by month, 2025

Hours spilling each month × the estimated spill rate for a works of this size. The bars are central estimates and the whiskers show the low–high range. Method.

Cubic metres (m³), estimate. Hours are measured by the event duration monitor.

Longest single spills

Started (GMT)	Overflow	Duration	Estimated volume
5 Jan 2025, 15:19	Low Wadsworth STW	4.4 days	11,405 – 71,886 m³
26 Jan 2025, 16:55	Low Wadsworth STW	3.5 days	9,039 – 56,974 m³
10 Feb 2025, 13:06	Low Wadsworth STW	2.7 days	6,899 – 43,484 m³
13 Jan 2025, 13:58	Low Wadsworth STW	2.6 days	6,656 – 41,949 m³
1 Jan 2025, 00:00	Low Wadsworth STW	2.1 days	5,381 – 33,918 m³

Estimated 2025 spill volume and pollution

Estimate, not a measurement. Monitors record how long an overflow spills, not how much. This calculator back-calculates a spill rate from the size of the works, using the Environment Agency's permit formulae, and multiplies it by published storm-sewage concentrations. How it works.

Volume, central estimate184,795 m³range 73,608 – 463,936 m³

In litres184.8 millionrange 73.6 million – 463.9 million L

Olympic swimming pools74at 2,500 m³ each

Organic load, as people's raw sewage277,193person-days of untreated BOD

Assumed spill rate while spilling: 30.1 – 189.6 L/s (central 75.5 L/s), from a dry-weather flow of 30.1 L/s.

Pollutant released	Low	Central	High	Concentration used (low / typical / high)
BOD₅ (organic load)	2,944 kg	16,632 kg	92,787 kg	40 / 90 / 200 mg/L Low/high: Europe range, Ellis & Jenkins 2005; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (both via botturi)
Suspended solids	7,729 kg	78,538 kg	334,498 kg	105 / 425 / 721 mg/L Low/high: Europe range; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (via botturi)
Ammonium-N	140 kg	1,164 kg	4,315 kg	1.9 / 6.3 / 9.3 mg/L Low: Germany, Brombach 2005; typical/high: Paris range 3.3–9.3 midpoint and top, Gasperi 2012 (via botturi); no UK value found
Total phosphorus	88 kg	480 kg	2,505 kg	1.2 / 2.6 / 5.4 mg/L Low/high: Paris, Gasperi 2012; typical: Slovakia (via botturi). UK figure of 10 mg/L treated as an outlier
E. coli	7.4 trillion organisms	184.8 trillion organisms	4.6 × 10¹⁵ organisms	10,000 / 100,000 / 1.0 million per 100 mL Median range at CSO and retention-tank outlets, Stott et al. 2018 (via botturi); typical = log midpoint

Low combines the low spill rate with low concentrations, and high combines high with high, so the true figure is very likely inside the range. Long spills become more diluted as they go on, so the central figure tends to overstate the load of long events. The calculator does not estimate the effect on the receiving water, which depends on river flow or tide at the time of the spill.

Low Wadsworth STW

Storm tank at sewage works · discharges to River Wear

Spills 2025: 62 (680 hours) · down 48% on 2024
Spills 2024: 119 (2,048 hours)
Long-term average: 102.0 spills a year (monitored since 2020)
Monitor uptime: 98% of the year
High-spill reason (company): Performance - SW Infiltration
Investigation: Operational investigation ongoing
Improvement: Operational improvement ongoing
WFD catchment: Wear from Houselop Beck to Beechburn Beck (GB103024077462)
Outlet location: NZ1811430817 (OS grid reference) · View on Apple Maps
EA ID / permit: NWL00819 · 241/1097

How the estimate works

Dry-weather flow (DWF) = population × water use per person × (1 + infiltration). Water use is 136.5 L per person per day, England's per-capita consumption for 2024–25 [EA]. Infiltration of groundwater into sewers is taken as 0–40% of that flow [Escritt, via HBF]. The Environment Agency defines DWF as PG + I + E [EA].
Population. The size of each works comes from the load entering it as reported under the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, in population equivalents (1 p.e. = 60 g of BOD a day) [UWWTD]. We treat population equivalent as population. That overstates flow where trade effluent adds load, and no official source links the two. Works serving fewer than 2,000 p.e. are not reported, so their size has to be entered by hand.
Low spill rate = DWF. This is the method used by Giakoumis & Voulvoulis (2026), which they note likely underestimates storm loads [G&V].
High spill rate = Formula A − flow to full treatment = (DWF + 1360P) − 3DWF. This is the largest flow the permit expects the storm tanks to handle before it passes on to treatment or overflows [EA]. The central rate is the geometric mean of the low and high rates.
Volume = spill rate × hours spilling, with hours taken from the event duration monitor.
Pollution = volume × published storm-sewage concentrations [Botturi et al.] [US EPA]. Organic load is also shown as person-days of untreated sewage at 60 g of BOD per person per day [UWWTD].

What this cannot tell you. It gives no real flow for any single spill, and no effect on the river or sea, which depends on the flow, tide and the other pressures on the water at the time. It gives no figure for spills from overflows on the sewer network, which serve catchments of unknown size. It is a way to put hours into rough physical terms, not a substitute for flow monitoring.

Sources

← All Northumbrian Water works · Contains Environment Agency data licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Spill start and stop times: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2026. All rights reserved. They are water-company data and have not been verified by the Environment Agency. Works size: EEA Waterbase UWWTD. How to read the data.