Shepton Mallet is now grappling with a rise in sewage overspills, according to recent Environment Agency reports. Wessex Water's facilities in and around the town have been pinpointed as the sources, raising questions about the utility's commitment to both public health and environmental safety.

Most affected sites in Shepton Mallet

The Shepton Mallet Water Recycling Centre itself had 35 instances of sewage spills over the last year, with a total duration of 387 hours. In close proximity, Doulting Brook, an important tributary to the River Sheppey, suffered from 17 incidents of sewage discharges, leaving local communities concerned about water quality.

Rising public concerns

The Rivers Trust said it was particularly concerned by storm overflows being used during hot periods – a risk as England faces a heatwave this week.

Tessa Wardley, director of communications and advocacy at the charity, said: "Discharging untreated sewage in dry weather is bad for both human health and river health – lower river flows mean more concentrated pollutants at a time when more people want to enjoy their rivers."

"Although a problem in their own right, these discharges are also the 'canary in the coalmine' pointing to greater problems in our sewerage and river systems. This could be blockages in the system, groundwater seeping into broken pipes, misconnections, or just poor management choices," she added.

She urged "robust, urgent action" on sewage and river management to help tackle the climate crisis and threats to biodiversity.

Government and corporate accountability

Water Minister Rebecca Pow has recognised the gravity of sewage spillage across England and outlined a £56 billion infrastructure programme to address the issue. However, there is ongoing debate about the timeline for improvements specific to Wells. Local MP James Heappey is facing calls to advocate for local solutions in addition to broader national strategies.

What Wessex Water have to say

As storm overflows should only operate during periods of intense rainfall, any foul water released from them will be very dilute because of the large volumes of rainwater flowing through the sewers, so they have very little environmental impact.The Environment Agency is responsible for river and bathing water quality and it regulates intermittent discharges from storm overflows through environmental permits. The main polluting load of the contents of a sewer should flow to the treatment centre, allowing very dilute sewage to overflow when the sewer capacity is exceeded. When storm overflows operate, the dilute sewage contains faecal bacteria, but their operation does not mean a bathing water's quality is necessarily unfit for swimming. Bacteria generally do not survive long outside host organisms and are especially fragile when exposed to sunlight in seawater. - Wessex Water

Matt Wheeldon, Wessex Water's director of infrastructure development, said: "We know our customers care passionately about protecting watercourses, whether or not they use them for swimming or recreation, and we share their passion.

"We would love to stop all storm overflow discharges immediately but unfortunately there is no quick fix – eliminating them completely would mean re-plumbing a sewerage system which has been built in this way for over 150 years.

"The solutions we're rolling out include separating out rainwater to stop it entering sewers and constructing large storage tanks to contain the combined rain and sewage for later treatment."

Wessex Water has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-led app which predicts bacteria levels using other parameters that can be continuously obtained from sensors within bathing or recreational waters.

Mr Wheeldon added: "We've already used AI to provide real-time water quality information at Warleigh Weir, near Bath, Baltic Wharf in Bristol and in Poole Harbour where we are providing water quality forecasts for the shellfishery and recreational businesses."