Storm overflow register · Severn Trent Water

Pant Plas Cerrig sewage works: storm overflow spills 2025

Pant Plas Cerrig sewage treatment works, run by Severn Trent Water, has 1 monitored storm overflow discharging to River Vyrnwy. In 2025 it recorded 18 spills totalling 150 hours, against 41 spills and 272 hours in 2024. By hours spilling, it ranks 215 of 435 Severn Trent Water works, where 1 spilled longest.

Works size: 1,989 population equivalent (PANT PLAS CERRIG 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.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecPant Plas Cerrig STW1 Jan 2025 01:17 GMT, 34 min1 Jan 2025 04:35 GMT, 18 h5 Jan 2025 09:29 GMT, 63.7 h8 Jan 2025 19:49 GMT, 5.1 h17 Sep 2025 09:44 GMT, 58 min20 Sep 2025 15:56 GMT, 12 min20 Sep 2025 19:00 GMT, 4.2 h4 Nov 2025 21:44 GMT, 32 min11 Nov 2025 20:48 GMT, 13 min14 Nov 2025 14:54 GMT, 14 min14 Nov 2025 17:00 GMT, 31.3 h16 Nov 2025 00:55 GMT, 38 min16 Nov 2025 09:11 GMT, 22 min16 Nov 2025 09:55 GMT, 98 min16 Nov 2025 19:25 GMT, 24 min29 Nov 2025 05:58 GMT, 12 min1 Dec 2025 19:38 GMT, 25 min9 Dec 2025 06:46 GMT, 9 min9 Dec 2025 08:42 GMT, 16.8 h10 Dec 2025 05:11 GMT, 22 min10 Dec 2025 07:11 GMT, 4.4 h

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.

02,0004,0006,0008,000Jan 2025: 87 h spilling ≈ 2,979 m³ (range 1,186–7,478 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: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0–0.0 m³)JunJul 2025: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0–0.0 m³)JulAug 2025: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0–0.0 m³)AugSep 2025: 5.4 h spilling ≈ 184 m³ (range 73–462 m³)SepOct 2025: 0.0 h spilling ≈ 0.0 m³ (range 0.0–0.0 m³)OctNov 2025: 36 h spilling ≈ 1,210 m³ (range 482–3,037 m³)NovDec 2025: 22 h spilling ≈ 753 m³ (range 300–1,891 m³)Dec
Cubic metres (m³), estimate. Hours are measured by the event duration monitor.

Longest single spills

Started (GMT)OverflowDurationEstimated volume
5 Jan 2025, 09:29Pant Plas Cerrig STW2.7 days865 – 5,450 m³
14 Nov 2025, 17:00Pant Plas Cerrig STW1.3 days425 – 2,679 m³
1 Jan 2025, 04:35Pant Plas Cerrig STW18.0 h245 – 1,543 m³
9 Dec 2025, 08:42Pant Plas Cerrig STW16.8 h229 – 1,440 m³
8 Jan 2025, 19:49Pant Plas Cerrig STW5.1 h69 – 432 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 estimate5,122 m³range 2,040 – 12,860 m³
In litres5.1 millionrange 2.0 million – 12.9 million L
Olympic swimming pools2.0at 2,500 m³ each
Organic load, as people's raw sewage7,683person-days of untreated BOD

Assumed spill rate while spilling: 3.8 – 23.8 L/s (central 9.5 L/s), from a dry-weather flow of 3.8 L/s.

Pollutant releasedLowCentralHighConcentration used (low / typical / high)
BOD₅ (organic load) 82 kg461 kg2,572 kg 40 / 90 / 200 mg/L
Low/high: Europe range, Ellis & Jenkins 2005; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (both via botturi)
Suspended solids 214 kg2,177 kg9,272 kg 105 / 425 / 721 mg/L
Low/high: Europe range; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (via botturi)
Ammonium-N 3.9 kg32 kg120 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 2.4 kg13 kg69 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 204.0 billion organisms5.1 trillion organisms128.6 trillion 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.

Pant Plas Cerrig STW

Storm tank at sewage works · discharges to River Vyrnwy

Spills 2025
18 (150 hours) · down 56% on 2024
Spills 2024
41 (272 hours)
Long-term average
36.0 spills a year (monitored since 2020)
Monitor uptime
100% of the year
Investigation
UWWTR investigation completed, Operational investigation completed
Improvement
No improvement action in reporting period
WFD catchment
Morda - conf unnamed trib to conf Afon Vyrn (GB109054049930)
Outlet location
SJ2706520567 (OS grid reference) · View on Apple Maps
EA ID / permit
SVT01754 · S/01/56011/R · company name: PANT-PLAS CERRIG (STW)

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.