Storm overflow register · Yorkshire Water

Harome sewage works: storm overflow spills 2025

Harome sewage treatment works, run by Yorkshire Water, has 1 monitored storm overflow discharging to Harome Moor Drain. In 2025 it recorded 113 spills totalling 1,919 hours, against 142 spills and 2,190 hours in 2024. By hours spilling, it ranks 5 of 283 Yorkshire Water works, where 1 spilled longest.

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.

JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecHarome Sewage…47 spills, 748 h, 1 Jan to 4 Feb2 spills, 1.1 h, 6 Feb to 7 Feb8 spills, 44.6 h, 8 Feb to 11 Feb12 Feb 2025 21:22 GMT, 90 min2 spills, 32.5 h, 20 Feb to 22 Feb13 spills, 75.4 h, 23 Feb to 28 Feb3 spills, 7.5 h, 12 Mar to 13 Mar13 spills, 4.9 h, 22 Mar to 23 Mar2 spills, 0.3 h, 24 May to 24 May15 Jul 2025 20:34 GMT, 2 min19 Jul 2025 15:54 GMT, 2 min4 Sep 2025 17:00 GMT, 4 min15 Sep 2025 08:56 GMT, 2 h25 spills, 3.2 h, 20 Sep to 21 Sep12 spills, 0.7 h, 3 Oct to 3 Oct16 spills, 3.3 h, 19 Oct to 20 Oct10 spills, 2 h, 23 Oct to 23 Oct2 spills, 1.2 h, 11 Nov to 12 Nov9 spills, 3.4 h, 12 Nov to 13 Nov2 spills, 15.4 h, 14 Nov to 15 Nov76 spills, 971.5 h, 19 Nov to 1 Jan

Hours spilling by month, 2025

0200400600800Jan 2025: 670 hours spillingJanFeb 2025: 233 hours spillingFebMar 2025: 12 hours spillingMarApr 2025: 0.0 hours spillingAprMay 2025: 0.3 hours spillingMayJun 2025: 0.0 hours spillingJunJul 2025: 0.1 hours spillingJulAug 2025: 0.0 hours spillingAugSep 2025: 5.3 hours spillingSepOct 2025: 5.9 hours spillingOctNov 2025: 251 hours spillingNovDec 2025: 740 hours spillingDec
Hours, measured by the event duration monitor.

Longest single spills

Started (GMT)OverflowDuration
20 Dec 2025, 11:16Harome Sewage Treatment Works7.1 days
10 Dec 2025, 10:34Harome Sewage Treatment Works4.8 days
1 Jan 2025, 07:40Harome Sewage Treatment Works4.4 days
10 Jan 2025, 07:28Harome Sewage Treatment Works3.3 days
7 Jan 2025, 07:22Harome Sewage Treatment Works3.0 days

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.

This works serves fewer than 2,000 people, or was not matched to a UWWTD report, so its size is not published. The population equivalent above is a placeholder of 1,000. Enter the population served if you know it.

Volume, central estimate32,874 m³range 13,094 - 82,532 m³
In litres32.9 millionrange 13.1 million - 82.5 million L
Olympic swimming pools13at 2,500 m³ each
Organic load, as people's raw sewage49,311person-days of untreated BOD

Assumed spill rate while spilling: 1.9 - 11.9 L/s (central 4.8 L/s), from a dry-weather flow of 1.9 L/s.

Pollutant releasedLowCentralHighConcentration used (low / typical / high)
BOD₅ (organic load) 524 kg2,959 kg16,506 kg 40 / 90 / 200 mg/L
Low/high: Europe range, Ellis & Jenkins 2005; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (both via botturi)
Suspended solids 1,375 kg13,972 kg59,505 kg 105 / 425 / 721 mg/L
Low/high: Europe range; typical: UK, Ellis & Jenkins 2005 (via botturi)
Ammonium-N 25 kg207 kg768 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 16 kg85 kg446 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 1.3 trillion organisms32.9 trillion organisms825.3 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.

Harome Sewage Treatment Works

Storm tank at sewage works · discharges to Harome Moor Drain

Spills 2025
113 (1,919 hours) · down 20% on 2024
Spills 2024
142 (2,190 hours)
Long-term average
115.7 spills a year (monitored since 2020)
Monitor uptime
100% of the year
High-spill reason (company)
Not asset maintenance - hydraulic capacity
Investigation
UWWTR investigation ongoing, Operational investigation completed
Improvement
No improvement action in reporting period
WFD catchment
Walmouth Beck from Source to River Riccal (GB104027068210)
Outlet location
SE6598082150 (OS grid reference) · View on Apple Maps
EA ID / permit
YWS00484 · 27/25/0079 · company name: HAROME/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 Yorkshire 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.