Storm overflow register · Severn Trent Water

Haxey sewage works: storm overflow spills 2025

Haxey sewage treatment works, run by Severn Trent Water, has 1 monitored storm overflow discharging to Trib of Ferry Drain. In 2025 it recorded 51 spills totalling 687 hours, against 83 spills and 1,132 hours in 2024. By hours spilling, it ranks 47 of 435 Severn Trent Water works, where 1 spilled longest.

Works size: 5,173 population equivalent (HAXEY 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.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecHaxey STW5 spills, 6.4 h, 1 Jan to 1 Jan60 spills, 134.7 h, 5 Jan to 13 Jan28 spills, 50.2 h, 27 Jan to 29 Jan5 Jun 2025 17:48 GMT, 2 h6 Jul 2025 19:46 GMT, 2.7 h4 spills, 11.3 h, 19 Jul to 20 Jul20 Sep 2025 20:16 GMT, 9.4 h12 spills, 39.1 h, 14 Nov to 16 Nov22 spills, 25.4 h, 23 Nov to 24 Nov40 spills, 74.3 h, 29 Nov to 3 Dec215 spills, 331.3 h, 4 Dec to 25 Dec

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.

025k50k75k100kJan 2025: 191 h spilling ≈ 16,956 m³ (range 6,754-42,569 m³)JanFeb 2025: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0-0.0 m³)FebMar 2025: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0-0.0 m³)MarApr 2025: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0-0.0 m³)AprMay 2025: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0-0.0 m³)MayJun 2025: 2.0 h spilling ≈ 177 m³ (range 71-445 m³)JunJul 2025: 14 h spilling ≈ 1,241 m³ (range 494-3,115 m³)JulAug 2025: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0-0.0 m³)AugSep 2025: 9.4 h spilling ≈ 833 m³ (range 332-2,092 m³)SepOct 2025: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0-0.0 m³)OctNov 2025: 104 h spilling ≈ 9,174 m³ (range 3,654-23,031 m³)NovDec 2025: 367 h spilling ≈ 32,503 m³ (range 12,947-81,600 m³)Dec
Cubic metres (m³), estimate. Hours are measured by the event duration monitor.

Longest single spills

Started (GMT)OverflowDurationEstimated volume
5 Jan 2025, 13:31Haxey STW3.5 days2,937 - 18,514 m³
18 Dec 2025, 12:35Haxey STW1.6 days1,389 - 8,756 m³
14 Nov 2025, 10:01Haxey STW1.4 days1,192 - 7,510 m³
29 Nov 2025, 08:48Haxey STW1.3 days1,074 - 6,768 m³
5 Dec 2025, 17:17Haxey STW23.9 h845 - 5,326 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 estimate60,884 m³range 24,252 - 152,853 m³
In litres60.9 millionrange 24.3 million - 152.9 million L
Olympic swimming pools24at 2,500 m³ each
Organic load, as people's raw sewage91,327person-days of untreated BOD

Assumed spill rate while spilling: 9.8 - 61.8 L/s (central 24.6 L/s), from a dry-weather flow of 9.8 L/s.

Pollutant releasedLowCentralHighConcentration used (low / typical / high)
BOD₅ (organic load) 970 kg5,480 kg30,571 kg 40 / 90 / 200 mg/L
Low/high: Europe range, Ellis & Jenkins 2005; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (both via botturi)
Suspended solids 2,546 kg25,876 kg110,207 kg 105 / 425 / 721 mg/L
Low/high: Europe range; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (via botturi)
Ammonium-N 46 kg384 kg1,422 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 29 kg158 kg825 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 2.4 trillion organisms60.9 trillion organisms1.5 × 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.

Haxey STW

Storm tank at sewage works · discharges to Trib of Ferry Drain

Spills 2025
51 (687 hours) · down 39% on 2024
Spills 2024
83 (1,132 hours)
Long-term average
67.8 spills a year (monitored since 2021)
Monitor uptime
100% of the year
High-spill reason (company)
Not asset maintenance - Hydraulic capacity
Investigation
UWWTR investigation ongoing, Operational investigation completed
Improvement
Operational improvement completed
WFD catchment
Ferry Drain Catchment (trib of Trent) (GB104028058241)
Outlet location
SK7669498512 (OS grid reference) · View on Apple Maps
EA ID / permit
SVT01094 · T/82/45052/R · company name: HAXEY - GRAIZELOUND STW (SSTO)

How the estimate works

  1. 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].
  2. 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.
  3. Low spill rate = DWF. This is the method used by Giakoumis & Voulvoulis (2026), which they note likely underestimates storm loads [G&V].
  4. 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.
  5. Volume = spill rate × hours spilling, with hours taken from the event duration monitor.
  6. 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

  1. EA: Water companies - environmental permits for storm overflows and emergency overflows
  2. EA: Water resources 2024 to 2025 - per capita consumption
  3. HBF: Foul sewer design - historic conventions (citing Escritt 1984 on infiltration)
  4. Giakoumis & Voulvoulis (2026), Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol., doi:10.1039/D5EW00860C
  5. Botturi et al. (2021), Crit. Rev. Environ. Sci. Technol. 51:1585 - CSO quality review, Table 2
  6. US EPA (2004) Report to Congress on CSOs and SSOs, chapter 4
  7. Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, Article 2(6): 1 p.e. = 60 g BOD5/day
  8. Olympic-size swimming pool: 2,500 m³ at the nominal 2 m depth

← All Severn Trent 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.