A water company has revealed plans to spend more than £630m on storm overflows to cut the amount of sewage spilled and improve the health of rivers in Notts.
Severn Trent has announced it will make the investment over a 25-year period up to 2050, as part of its plans to reduce spills from storm overflows across the county.
A total of 258 storm overflows across Nottinghamshire will undergo investment – which could range from increasing the capacity of its storage tanks to introducing green nature-based solutions.
The company said it is also investing to ensure rivers are monitored closer than ever before with 100% of its storm overflows with monitors – and the company is now analysing around 300m pieces of data a year helping to prioritise investment.
The investment for Nottinghamshire forms part of a wider £4.4bn injection into 2,472 storm overflows across the Severn Trent region, as part of the water company’s Storm Overflow Action Plan (SOAP).
The aim is to reduce the number of spills into water courses across the county, ensuring that by 2040 no overflow will spill more than 10 times in an average year in high priority areas, and in all areas by 2045.
Bob Stear, Severn Trent chief engineer said: “This is a huge long-term investment plan for Nottinghamshire, improving storm overflows and bringing benefits to rivers now and during the coming years.
“Today’s announcement marks another significant milestone in our drive to deliver real improvements in river health. This is why we launched Get River Positive that has already delivered great results, despite the region having experienced seven named storms between September and December, contributing to some of the wettest months on record. And we know there is still more to do, which is why this investment is so important – not just to us, but to our region’s rivers and the communities they serve.”
Back in 2022 it was revealed that untreated sewage had been discharged into the Ouse Dyke in Gedling for 376 hours, according to figures by published by The Rivers Trust.
The data showed 218 incidents of raw sewage being poured into the dyke were recorded during 2021.
