Storm overflow register · Severn Trent Water

Uttoxeter sewage works: storm overflow spills 2025

Uttoxeter sewage treatment works, run by Severn Trent Water, has 1 monitored storm overflow discharging to River Dove. In 2025 it recorded 14 spills totalling 79 hours, against 34 spills and 289 hours in 2024. By hours spilling, it ranks 290 of 435 Severn Trent Water works, where 1 spilled longest.

Works size: 26,984 population equivalent (UTTOXETER 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.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecUttoxeter Sewage…1 Jan 2025 08:16 GMT, 4.9 h1 Jan 2025 20:08 GMT, 78 min5 Jan 2025 21:00 GMT, 24.3 h4 Sep 2025 12:20 GMT, 2.4 h17 Sep 2025 09:02 GMT, 2.3 h19 Oct 2025 19:12 GMT, 45 min19 Oct 2025 20:30 GMT, 2.5 h4 Nov 2025 19:54 GMT, 4 h14 Nov 2025 18:28 GMT, 11.1 h15 Nov 2025 09:18 GMT, 15 min15 Nov 2025 09:38 GMT, 19 min15 Nov 2025 10:00 GMT, 2.1 h15 Nov 2025 12:11 GMT, 13 min15 Nov 2025 12:33 GMT, 15 min29 Nov 2025 05:26 GMT, 62 min29 Nov 2025 08:12 GMT, 3.3 h29 Nov 2025 11:35 GMT, 2 min29 Nov 2025 12:07 GMT, 69 min15 Dec 2025 17:46 GMT, 8.2 h16 Dec 2025 02:18 GMT, 31 min16 Dec 2025 08:38 GMT, 87 min18 Dec 2025 16:04 GMT, 6.2 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.

010k20k30k40kJan 2025: 30 h spilling ≈ 14,056 m³ (range 5,599–35,287 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: 4.7 h spilling ≈ 2,173 m³ (range 866–5,456 m³)SepOct 2025: 3.2 h spilling ≈ 1,480 m³ (range 589–3,714 m³)OctNov 2025: 24 h spilling ≈ 11,004 m³ (range 4,383–27,626 m³)NovDec 2025: 16 h spilling ≈ 7,583 m³ (range 3,020–19,036 m³)Dec
Cubic metres (m³), estimate. Hours are measured by the event duration monitor.

Longest single spills

Started (GMT)OverflowDurationEstimated volume
5 Jan 2025, 21:00Uttoxeter Sewage Treatment Works1.0 days4,469 – 28,168 m³
14 Nov 2025, 18:28Uttoxeter Sewage Treatment Works11.1 h2,047 – 12,904 m³
15 Dec 2025, 17:46Uttoxeter Sewage Treatment Works8.2 h1,516 – 9,557 m³
18 Dec 2025, 16:04Uttoxeter Sewage Treatment Works6.2 h1,139 – 7,177 m³
1 Jan 2025, 08:16Uttoxeter Sewage Treatment Works4.9 h893 – 5,630 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 estimate36,295 m³range 14,457 – 91,120 m³
In litres36.3 millionrange 14.5 million – 91.1 million L
Olympic swimming pools15at 2,500 m³ each
Organic load, as people's raw sewage54,442person-days of untreated BOD

Assumed spill rate while spilling: 51.2 – 322.4 L/s (central 128.4 L/s), from a dry-weather flow of 51.2 L/s.

Pollutant releasedLowCentralHighConcentration used (low / typical / high)
BOD₅ (organic load) 578 kg3,267 kg18,224 kg 40 / 90 / 200 mg/L
Low/high: Europe range, Ellis & Jenkins 2005; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (both via botturi)
Suspended solids 1,518 kg15,425 kg65,697 kg 105 / 425 / 721 mg/L
Low/high: Europe range; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (via botturi)
Ammonium-N 27 kg229 kg847 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 17 kg94 kg492 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 1.4 trillion organisms36.3 trillion organisms911.2 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.

Uttoxeter Sewage Treatment Works

Storm tank at sewage works · discharges to River Dove

Spills 2025
14 (78 hours) · down 59% on 2024
Spills 2024
34 (289 hours)
Long-term average
33.3 spills a year (monitored since 2020)
Monitor uptime
100% of the year
Investigation
UWWTR investigation completed, Operational investigation completed
Improvement
Operational improvement completed
WFD catchment
Dove - R Churnet to R Trent (GB104028052420)
Outlet location
SK1061634382 (OS grid reference) · View on Apple Maps
EA ID / permit
SVT02380 · T/33/36107/R · company name: UTTOXETER (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.