Storm overflow register · South West Water

Barnstaple sewage works: storm overflow spills 2025

Barnstaple sewage treatment works, run by South West Water, has 1 monitored storm overflow discharging to River Taw Estuary. In 2025 it recorded 76 spills totalling 973 hours, against 113 spills and 1,613 hours in 2024. By hours spilling, it ranks 119 of 334 South West Water works, where 1 spilled longest.

Works size: 57,271 population equivalent (BARNSTAPLE 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
4 Jan 2025, 21:47	Barnstaple (Ashford) STW	3.2 days	29,993 – 189,041 m³
8 Dec 2025, 05:35	Barnstaple (Ashford) STW	2.8 days	26,508 – 167,074 m³
27 Jan 2025, 04:26	Barnstaple (Ashford) STW	2.8 days	26,202 – 165,144 m³
5 Dec 2025, 05:26	Barnstaple (Ashford) STW	1.8 days	17,166 – 108,193 m³
1 Dec 2025, 06:58	Barnstaple (Ashford) STW	1.6 days	15,088 – 95,095 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 estimate955,105 m³range 380,438 – 2.4 million m³

In litres955.1 millionrange 380.4 million – 2.4 billion L

Olympic swimming pools382at 2,500 m³ each

Organic load, as people's raw sewage1.4 millionperson-days of untreated BOD

Assumed spill rate while spilling: 108.6 – 684.3 L/s (central 272.6 L/s), from a dry-weather flow of 108.6 L/s.

Pollutant released	Low	Central	High	Concentration used (low / typical / high)
BOD₅ (organic load)	15,218 kg	85,959 kg	479,566 kg	40 / 90 / 200 mg/L Low/high: Europe range, Ellis & Jenkins 2005; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (both via botturi)
Suspended solids	39,946 kg	405,920 kg	1.7 million kg	105 / 425 / 721 mg/L Low/high: Europe range; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (via botturi)
Ammonium-N	723 kg	6,017 kg	22,300 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	457 kg	2,483 kg	12,948 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	38.0 trillion organisms	955.1 trillion organisms	2.4 × 10¹⁶ 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.

Barnstaple (Ashford) STW

Storm tank at sewage works · discharges to River Taw Estuary

Spills 2025: 76 (973 hours) · down 33% on 2024
Spills 2024: 113 (1,613 hours)
Long-term average: 81.2 spills a year (monitored since 2010)
Monitor uptime: 100% of the year
High-spill reason (company): Performance - SW Infiltration
Investigation: Operational investigation completed
Improvement: No improvement action in reporting period
Shellfish water: Taw-Torridge Estuary
WFD catchment: Not part of a WFD catchment
Outlet location: SS53253406 (OS grid reference) · View on Apple Maps
EA ID / permit: SBB00072 · 2491 · company name: ASHFORD STW_SSO_BARNSTAPLE

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 South West 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.