Storm overflow register · South West Water

Exeter sewage works: storm overflow spills 2025

Exeter sewage treatment works, run by South West Water, has 2 monitored storm overflows discharging to River Exe Estuary(E). In 2025 they recorded 67 spills totalling 330 hours, against 137 spills and 460 hours in 2024. By hours spilling, it ranks 208 of 334 South West Water works, where 1 spilled longest.

Works size: 166,837 population equivalent (EXETER 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
9 Dec 2025, 00:47	Exeter (Countess Wear) STW	15.1 h	17,213 – 108,489 m³
18 Apr 2025, 12:30	Exeter (Countess Wear) STW	14.4 h	16,378 – 103,226 m³
9 Dec 2025, 01:06	Exeter (Countess Wear) STW	12.9 h	14,651 – 92,341 m³
18 Apr 2025, 15:36	Exeter (Countess Wear) STW	10.4 h	11,842 – 74,638 m³
18 Dec 2025, 11:38	Exeter (Countess Wear) STW	8.7 h	9,849 – 62,079 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 estimate943,357 m³range 375,759 – 2.4 million m³

In litres943.4 millionrange 375.8 million – 2.4 billion L

Olympic swimming pools377at 2,500 m³ each

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

Assumed spill rate while spilling: 316.3 – 1,993.5 L/s (central 794.1 L/s), from a dry-weather flow of 316.3 L/s.

Pollutant released	Low	Central	High	Concentration used (low / typical / high)
BOD₅ (organic load)	15,030 kg	84,902 kg	473,667 kg	40 / 90 / 200 mg/L Low/high: Europe range, Ellis & Jenkins 2005; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (both via botturi)
Suspended solids	39,455 kg	400,927 kg	1.7 million kg	105 / 425 / 721 mg/L Low/high: Europe range; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (via botturi)
Ammonium-N	714 kg	5,943 kg	22,026 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	451 kg	2,453 kg	12,789 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	37.6 trillion organisms	943.4 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.

Exeter (Countess Wear) STW

Storm tank at sewage works (with treatment) · discharges to River Exe Estuary(E)

Spills 2025: 42 (234 hours) · down 59% on 2024
Spills 2024: 103 (321 hours)
Long-term average: 51.7 spills a year
Monitor uptime: 100% of the year
High-spill reason (company): Performance - SW Infiltration
Investigation: Operational investigation completed
Improvement: No improvement action in reporting period
Treatment: UV (Ultraviolet)
Shellfish water: Exe Estuary
WFD catchment: Not part of a WFD catchment
Outlet location: SX94978905 (OS grid reference) · View on Apple Maps
EA ID / permit: SBB00426 · 202475 · company name: COUNTESS WEAR STW_SSO_EXETER

Exeter (Countess Wear) STW

Inlet overflow at sewage works · discharges to River Exe Estuary(E)

Spills 2025: 25 (96 hours) · down 26% on 2024
Spills 2024: 34 (138 hours)
Long-term average: 20.9 spills a year (monitored since 2012)
Monitor uptime: 100% of the year
Investigation: No investigation activity in reporting period
Improvement: No improvement action in reporting period
Shellfish water: Exe Estuary
WFD catchment: Not part of a WFD catchment
Outlet location: SX94798924 (OS grid reference) · View on Apple Maps
EA ID / permit: SBB00425 · 202475 · company name: COUNTESS WEAR STW_PSCSOEO_EXETER

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.